Switzerland

Swiss bank J. Safra Sarasin must pay German drug store entrepreneur Erwin Mueller around €45 million ($50.7 million) in compensation for incorrect investment advice, a court in the German city of Ulm has ruled.

The Brazilian-owned bank had put Mueller’s money into a fund specialising in so-called cum-ex trades. The 84-year-old businessman had said the bank did not properly advise him about the risks involved. Meuller had demanded restitution from the bank for being poorly advised on high-risk funds. The bank, which had rejected the accusations, has a month to appeal the verdict. It noted the case dated back to when it was majority owned by another business.

Hunstman Corp and Switzerland’s Clariant AG announced their merger on Monday; the deal would create a trans-Atlantic company valued at about $14 billion offering an array of chemicals such as polyurethanes, pigments, automotive fluids, additives and resins that are used across industries ranging from aerospace to agriculture to household cleaning.
Under the terms of the proposed deal, Clariant shareholders would own 52 percent of the combined company. Huntsman shareholders, including its eponymous founding family, would own the rest.

On Sunday Swiss voted on whether to support the federal government’s plan to overhaul Switzerland’s energy system. The plan was accepted by 58.2% of voters with only four of the country’s 26 cantons voting "no".

The Swiss initiative mirrors efforts elsewhere in Europe to reduce dependence on nuclear power, partly sparked by Japan’s Fukushima disaster in 2011.
Following its approval, the new law is expected to come into force in early 2018. According to the Swiss government website, it is aimed at reducing energy consumption, increasing energy efficiency and promoting renewable energies such as water, solar, wind and geothermal power, as well as biomass fuels.

Switzerland ranked third with 92 points in a global list of countries assessed for health care availability and quality (HAQ), while the tiny European nation of Andorra topped the list with an overall score of 95 out of 100, followed by Iceland (94), according to the latest report by the British medical journal The Lancet.

At the bottom of the table was the Central African Republic, scoring just 29 on the overall index, while UK ranked 30th and US 35th with an overall score of 81, tied with Estonia and Montenegro.

Lucerne University published its annual report, for the third year in a row, on crowdfunding in Switzerland. The “Crowdfunding Monitoring Switzerland 2016 tracks the growth and trends in this sector of finance.

In the introduction, Prof. Dr. Andreas Dietrich, states: "In previous years, we have usually commented that the market had grown rapidly, but the absolute volumes of funding remained at a low level. This year, though, the market has grown markedly in percentage as well as in absolute terms. For the first time, crowdfunding has been instrumental in raising substantially more than CHF 100 million. This compares to just under CHF 28 million in the previous year. The structure of the market has also changed greatly: as expected, real estate crowdinvesting and the financing of SMEs via crowdfunding (business crowdlending) have made considerable contributions to this growth".

Switzerland’s occupational pensions association has decided to back the country’s reform package, AV2020. During its general assembly last week, ASIP announced its support for the proposals agreed in parliament earlier this year, after seeking its members’ opinions on the Altersvorsorge 2020/Prévoyance vieillesse 2020 (AV2020/PV2020) reform package.

After considerable back-and-forth, the reform was approved in March. Next, Switzerland’s population will decide on the reform package in a binding referendum on 24 September.

With the development of China-Swiss relations, the winter sport industry has become one of the focuses of the two countries. World Winter Sports (Beijing) Expo 2017 ("WWSE," will be held September 7-10 in Beijing) will keep up with the development trend, inviting Switzerland as the Major Honored Guest Country to start relevant cooperation and promote the development of winter sport industry, enhancing WWSE to a new stage. WWSE is co-organized by Beijing Olympic City Development Association (BODA) and International Data Group (IDG).

Credit Suisse shareholders on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a plan to sell 4 billion Swiss francs ($4.1 billion) of new shares to raise capital, allowing the banking giant to keep full control of its profitable Swiss unit. The capital raising plans, announced last month, received 99.35 percent of the votes at an extraordinary general meeting in Zurich.

Credit Suisse announced the capital hike on April 26, shelving its longstanding plans to partially float its Swiss banking unit through an initial public offering. The bank previously raised 6 billion francs in 2015.