Airbitz, a San Diego-based bitcoin wallet and data security company, has announced a partnership with Bity, a Swiss bitcoin exchange that allows users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies with Euros and Swiss Francs. Bity will be a plug-in application inside the Airbitz Wallet allowing Airbitz users to buy and sell bitcoin with Euros and Swiss Francs. Airbitz has only had buy/sell bitcoin capabilities for its users with US bank accounts but this plug-in allows those with European bank accounts to buy through the Airbitz Wallet easily, cheaply, and securely.
Credit Suisse has just reported first quarter earnings which show Switzerland’s second-largest bank beating expectations, helped by a strong performance across the board. The bank simultaneously announced its intention to pursue a 4 billion swiss franc ($4 billion) capital raise.
It said the first quarter had provided "further confirmation" that it was delivering "profitable and complaint growth" and had "generated positive momentum across our businesses".
Swiss pharmaceuticals group Novartis says net income fell 15 percent in the first quarter, as it continued to adjust to generic competition for its Gleevec leukemia drug and stopped work on a hoped-for treatment for heart failure.
The Basel-based company said net income dropped to $1.7 billion in the quarter, compared to $2.01 in the year-earlier period. It cited a $200 million charge to discontinue RLX030, which failed to pass tests in trials as a treatment for acute heart failure.
Eric Olsen, CEO of the Swiss-French giant LafargeHolcim, has stepped down following an internal investigation into one of the company’s manufacturing plants in Syria. In 2013 and 2014, one of world’s largest cement company allegedly paid armed groups protection money to keep its Jalabiya plant open while the country’s civil war intensified.
“While I was absolutely not involved in, nor even aware of, any wrongdoing I believe my departure will contribute to bringing back serenity to a company that has been exposed for months on this case,” Olsen said on Monday, who will leave on July 15, two years after becoming chief executive and taking responsibility for implementing the €41bn merger between the French company Lafarge and its Swiss rival Holcim in 2015.
Swiss Economic Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann had strong words for Credit Suisse bonus. Asked over the issue on Sunday by Zentralschweiz am Sonntag, he said that so-called fat-cat salaries for top bankers are stupid and divisive.
The minister, part of the nation’s governing seven-member cabinet, was commenting about payouts to senior managers of Switzerland’s second-largest bank, Credit Suisse.
The Swiss National Bank stands ready to defend the franc with interest-rate cuts and market interventions if investors pile into the haven currency in response to the French elections, said SNB President Thomas Jordan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
“We hope that a reasonable candidate can win, somebody who is in favor of free markets, but we cannot exclude that there will be more pressure on the Swiss franc,” Jordan explained in Washington, on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund spring meetings. “But as you know we also have our instruments to react to such a situation.”
One again, Switzerland again ranked No. 1 on the list, according to the 2017 Global Talent Competitiveness Index 2015-16, released by INSEAD, the France-based business school for the world. The research is produced in partnership with the Adecco Group and the Human Capital Leadership Institute of Singapore.
Essentially, the report argued that while tech advancements will continue to disrupt the workplace and displace jobs, new opportunities will also be created. High ranking countries share key traits, according to INSEAD.
Novartis expects growth in China’s pharmaceuticals market to accelerate as the nation’s health authorities expedite approvals for new medicines and increase reimbursement. The Chinese pharmaceutical market may exceed $300 billion in sales by 2020, Chief Executive Officer Joe Jimenez said in an interview in Geneva on Tuesday. That will happen as regulators in the country push to offer new drugs to sick patients who’ve traditionally not had access to the world’s groundbreaking meds. The country is now the world’s second-biggest pharmaceutical market, behind the U.S.
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