Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has become the world’s second-richest man adding $1.5 billion to his fortune after Amazon gained $9 billion in market value during trading on Wednesday.
The 53-year-old has a net worth of $75.6 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and surpassed Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet ($75.5 billion) and Inditex fashion group chairman Amancio Ortega ($74.1 billion) for the second spot.
Switzerland has started the countdown to a mass-market switch to the ISO 20022 standard for payments harmonisation across all consumer, corporate and bank payments. The digital payments drive will see Swiss financial institutions complete the changeover to the new standard by the end of 2017 and a corporate switch by mid-2018 at the latest.
The EU converted its payment traffic to ISO 20022 back in 2014; countries such as Japan and Australia also make use of ISO 20022. During the harmonization process, all the formats, procedures and payment slips that have evolved over time will be aligned with ISO 20022, a proven and future-proof standard.
Total economic losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters amounted to $ 175 billion in 2016, almost twice the $ 94 billion seen in 2015, the latest sigma study from the Swiss Re Institute says.
The losses in 2016 – both economic and insured – were the highest since 2012 and reversed the downtrend of the last four years. This was due to a high number of sizable disaster events, including earthquakes, storms, floods and wildfires in 2016, across all regions. Some events struck areas with high insurance penetration, which accounted for the 42% increase in insured losses. That also means that many people in those areas were better equipped to recover from the shock of a disaster, for example with prompt settlement of their insurance claims.
German citizens still possess the world’s most powerful passport, according to new research, the 12th annual edition of the Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index, which is produced in partnership with the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The ranking takes into account how many countries can be visited without applying for a visa. German passport holders can travel to 176 out of a possible 218, while Britons can visit 173; for the fourth year in a row, it has been crowned “world’s most powerful passport.”
The UK topped the 2015 rankings, alongside Germany, but ceded that spot after several countries relaxed visa restrictions to the latter. It was leapfrogged by Sweden last year and now lags behind Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain and the US.
The Swiss who live abroad will not denounce Postfinance that does not grant them the right to have a credit card. At the meeting in Bern today, the Council represents them (CSE) has decided to give priority to dialogue.
The association is still "acting against discrimination banking," it said in a statement. The banks "continue to put a spoke in the wheels of Swiss nationals who live abroad and wish to maintain a banking relationship with their country of origin." The CSE has instructed the Organization of the Swiss Abroad to propose solutions within the month of August.
UBS, the world’s biggest wealth manager, will impose a penalty charge on customers who park euros with the bank, a reaction to the negative interest rate environment in the euro zone.
The Swiss bank, the world’s largest wealth manager, will introduce from May an annual fee of 0.6% on accounts with more than €1 million ($1.1 mln). The charge will apply to total amounts held by individual customers and be calculated on a daily basis. It comes in response to the ultra-low or negative European Central Bank rates, in the wake of the financial crisis, which have eaten into banks’ margins. UBS currently imposes an individual deposit charge for large account balances held in Swiss francs by corporate, institutional and certain very wealthy clients, as it deals with negative interest rates charged by the Swiss National Bank.
Hurun Report and Wailian Group on Tuesday released the Hurun Immigrant Billionaires List 2017, a ranking of the immigrant billionaires from around the world. The Hurun team of researchers extensively went through the Hurun Global Rich List 2017, pulling out all first generation immigrants, those who reside today in a country different to where they were born and/or brought up. This is the first year of the list and is a sublist of the Hurun Global Rich List 2017 series, released on 7 March. Hoogewerf said, "We believe this to be the first serious attempt to track the immigration status of the world’s billionaires."
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once again topped the Forbes magazine list of the world’s richest billionaires, while US President Donald Trump slipped more than 200 spots, the magazine said on Monday. Gates, whose wealth is estimated at $86 billion, led the list for the fourth straight year; Gates’s is followed by Warren Buffett, the American magnate, and Berkshire Hathaway chief with an estimated wealth of $75.6 billion.
