The Swiss franc’s recent weakening against the euro is a positive development but the trend was “fragile”, Swiss National Bank governing board member Andrea Maechler said on Thursday.
“Overall, the trends are pointing in the right direction for the Swiss franc, but it is too early to say whether these trends are sustainable,” Maechler told an economic conference in Yverdon-Les-Bains.
Switzerland, Germany and Austria have the highest proportion of people renting a home rather than buying, accounting for over 45% of their populations, a new report shows.
At the other end of the spectrum, in Croatia, Macedonia and Romania less than 10% of the population rent, according to the research from real estate firm Savills.
Switzerland is the only country where more people rent than buy, with almost 60% doing so, while in Germany it is almost 50% and in Austria it is just over 45% while in Turkey and Denmark it is just under 40%.
Geneva-based private bank Lombard Odier has reversed a fall in profits last year to post a 13% year-on-year rise for the first half of 2017. Figures published today show consolidated net profits for the six months to the end of June were 69 million Swiss francs (€60.4 million).
In a statement, the bank, one of Switzerland’s oldest, said that market performance had lifted assets as global protectionist threats and European political risks diminished. Total client assets stood at 242 billion Swiss francs at the end of June, up from 233 billion francs at the end of 2016. The rise in profits so far this year compares with a 13% fall in net profits for the whole of 2016.
Switzerland should be reintegrated into the Erasmus+ student exchange programme from the beginning of 2018, and not in 2021 as the government wants, says the Swiss Student Union.
On Monday a petition signed by 10,000 people was lodged with the federal government, demanding that Switzerland resume its negotiations with the EU on the subject so that Swiss students can be reintegrated in the programme by 2018 and to allocate sufficient financial resources to the scheme.
The Committee on Economy and Royalties of the National Council or CER-N, a key panel of Swiss parliament which rejected on August 15 a proposal seeking to outrightly suspend implementation of the AEOI Switzerland has agreed to adopt with 41 nations including India, will examine the criteria a country would need to satisfy to start getting access to data under the automatic information exchange.
According to the minutes of the last meeting of the committee, the CER-N will continue its examination at a meeting on September 11 of the 41 AEOIs agreed upon by the Federal Council, the highest decision making body of Swiss government.
As if you needed any more justification, the case for eating cheese just got stronger. Granted the study was carried out on worms, but researchers at Korea University in Seoul have found a link between cheese and longevity.
Emmentaler – a.k.a. Swiss cheese (cow’s milk cheese with cherry-sized holes) – contains the bacterium Propionibacterium freudenreichii. According to Metro News, it’s this bacterium in particular that the scientists examined, finding that it decreases inflammation and by extension, promotes longevity.
Italy’s largest retail bank Intesa Sanpaolo said on Wednesday it had reached an agreement to buy Switzerland’s Banque Morval. "The agreement is in line with Intesa Sanpaolo’s strategic plan to strengthen its presence on international markets in the field of private banking," the two said in a joint statement, without disclosing the value of the acquisition.
Online catering marketplace, Caterwings, have conducted a study regarding the global price of basic food items, as preliminary research ahead of their expansion into foreign markets. The research highlighted in particular that the cost of meat around the world is remarkably varied. To share these insights, Caterwings have released the 2017 Meat Price Index, which details the cost of meat in over 50 countries worldwide. The study revealed that Switzerland has the highest meat prices, at 141.9% more expensive than the average cost worldwide, followed by Norway (63.7% more expensive) and Hong Kong (61% more expensive), while Ukraine has the least expensive meat prices, at 52.3% less expensive than the average cost, closely followed by Malaysia (50.3% less expensive).
