Fixed income

Switzerland will limit Bulgarian and Romanian citizens’ access to the Swiss labour market for the next 12 months, the government said on Wednesday, as it seeks to slow increased migration from those two countries since last year, Reuters reported.

The number of five-year "B" residence permits for people coming from the two countries will be fixed at 996: the decision would be due to the threshold of workers from those countries taking largely seasonal jobs had been exceeded between June 2016 and May 2017.

Swiss Life had a «good start» to the year 2017, with fee revenue of 340 million Swiss francs, an increase of 5% compared with the same period a year ago. Premiums dropped 1% to 6.5 billion francs, the company said in a statement today. Five analysts polled by Reuters had on average expected gross premiums to fall 1.3 percent to 6.595 billion francs.
"Swiss Life has made a good start to the year," Chief Financial Officer Thomas Buess said in a statement. "We also managed to increase fee income and assets under management in the first quarter of 2017. That shows we are continuing our progress toward implementing our group-wide program ‘Swiss Life 2018’."

Credit Suisse USA said Tuesday it will expand its Research Triangle Park operations, creating 1,200 new jobs and spending $70.5 million on capital investments.

Eric Varvel, president and chief executive of Credit Suisse USA, said the company had planned to expand earlier in North Carolina, but held off because of House Bill 2, known as the transgender restroom law.

“While it was on the books, we chose to halt our expansion plans in the state and consider other options,” Varvel said. “We realize the recent repeal of HB2 contains some compromises, and while not perfect, it is an important first step that re-establishes the minimum conditions for us to expand our presence in the state.”

Adecco’s first-quarter profit rose more than a fifth, better than expected, as the world’s largest temporary staffing company continued to get a boost from major markets in southern Europe while projecting modest growth in the U.S.

Net profit attributable to shareholders rose to €176 million ($192.2 million) in the three months to March, beating the average estimate of 165 million in a Reuters poll of analysts. Sales rose to €5.73 billion, better than the poll average of 5.68 billion.

Dutch staffing company Randstad last month reported a 21 increase in net profit during the quarter, boosted by strong growth in France and Germany. U.S. rival Manpower’s earnings rose 3.8 percent in the first three months as it saw broad improvement across Europe.

The French presidential election has delivered a clear win to Emmanuel Macron. With an estimated 65.8% of the votes going to Macron, compared to 34.2% to Marine Le Pen, he is France’s new president. At the same time the election brought the highest rate of protest votes since 1969. 26% of voters abstained and 9% handed in a blank form.

Switzerland’s press and politicians largely consider the election of new French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday as good news.
Doris Leuthard, Switzerland’s president, said: “On behalf of the Swiss government I congratulate Mr Macron on his election as president of the French Republic. Switzerland and France are linked by a common language and shared values of liberty and democracy. Based on this I am convinced that we will continue our good neighbourly relationship and that our two countries will pursue and deepen our stable and positive cooperation.”

French voters have elected centrist Emmanuel Macron as the country’s youngest president ever, delivering a resounding victory to the unabashedly pro-European former investment banker and strengthening France’s place as a central pillar of the European Union.

Such a comfortable Macron win is in line with what pollsters have been saying for weeks, with most polls saying that the 39-year-old centrist would win with a lead of around 20 points. His final lead, of 31 points, dwarfed even this.

Marine Le Pen, his far-right opponent in the presidential runoff, quickly called the 39-year-old to concede defeat after voters rejected her "French-first" nationalism by a large margin. Macron swept the board geographically, with Le Pen winning just two of France’s 107 departments.

Shareholders in Swiss pesticide and seed giant Syngenta have accepted the company’s takeover by state-owned ChemChina, the companies said Friday, which would be the biggest overseas acquisition by a Chinese firm.
The proposed merger is part of a broader wave of consolidation in the agro-chemicals sector that has worried environmental activists and farmers.
At the closing date for the offer on May 4, shareholders holding around 80.7 percent of the company’s stock had accepted the US$43-billion takeover, according to a preliminary count. Subject to confirmation of the results, “the Minimum Acceptance Rate condition of 67 percent of issued Syngenta shares has been met”, they said in a statement.

Facebook had another strong quarter, beating estimates to start 2017. Revenue in the first quarter climbed 49% to $8 billion, which was significantly higher than most analysts expected, and net income was $3 billion or $1.04 per share, compared with consensus estimates of just 87 cents.

It earned that from 1.94 billion users, up from 1.86 billion last quarter, growing at a faster 4.3% compared to 3.91% last quarter.
Facebook said in its last quarterly update that it expects to see its advertising growth rate "come down meaningfully" in 2017 as it stops adding more advertising to the news feed.