Switzerland

PISA is best known for its data on learning outcomes, but it’s 2015 edition also studied students’ satisfaction with life, their relationships with peers, teachers and parents, and how they spend their time outside of school.
Students in some of the countries that top the PISA league tables in science and mathematics reported comparatively low satisfaction with life; but Estonia, Finland, the Netherlands and Switzerland seem able to combine good learning outcomes with highly satisfied students.

Iron ore prices are retreating again and the overall Chinese economy is growing less quickly, but one sector is skyrocketing: outbound tourism. The United Nations World Tourism Organisation preliminary 2016 scorecard has Chinese spending $344 billion as foreign tourists, a jump of 12 per cent in local currencies and more than double the splurge of the next biggest spenders, Americans.

While travelers from China have grown to be Switzerland’s fifth largest market, with a record 1.52 million overnights in 2015, much of that is low-yield tour groups series taking the traditional route of Italy-Switzerland-France, and largely benefiting Swiss destinations such as Lucerne and Interlaken.

Power production and distribution utility Alpiq has commenced operation of its first power-to-heat system in Niedergösgen, Switzerland, the company announced this week.
The $6m, 22 MW system in the canton of Solothurn, was constructed by Alpiq. While construction commenced in the beginning of October last year, the new Alpiq system was commissioned in the middle of this month. It features two 11 MW electrode boilers which generate process steam.

Food group Nestle has confirmed it aims to grow underlying sales by 2-4% this year after growth slowed in the first quarter, hit by weak consumer demand for packaged foods and a deflationary environment.

Underlying "organic" sales growth at the maker of Buitoni pasta and Maggi soups slowed to 2.3 percent in the first quarter, from 3.9 percent in the year-ago period that included one more trading day and an earlier Easter, the group based in Vevey on Lake Geneva said in a statement on Thursday.

This was in line with forecasts in a Reuters poll. Consumer goods groups face challenges as increasingly health-conscious consumers often prefer fresh produce to packaged foods.

Boris Titov, the Russian business-ombudsman, has proposed the creation of a region in the Crimea similar to the “kriptodoliny” (Cryptovalley) in Zug, Switzerland for funding cryptocurrency and blockchain organizations, according to Rambler News Service. “Maybe we can make a Crypto Valley Crimea,” Titov said.

This initiative was talked down during the Russian science-practical forum called “Blockchain: dialog between business and government” on the 13th of April in Moscow.

The Swiss government on Tuesday acknowledged the country’s reappearance on a U.S. Treasury watch list of currency manipulators, but said the status would have no immediate consequences, as Reuters reported.

Switzerland met two of the three criteria to be named a manipulator, both in the most recent report and the previous one in October: it runs a material current account surplus and it engages in persistent, one-sided intervention in foreign exchange markets.

Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam and the bank’s board of directors have offered to cut their own bonuses by 40% ahead of its annual meeting. They also proposed to keep total board pay at the same level as 2015 and 2016.

The move follows pressure from Swiss lawmakers and the bank’s shareholders to address excessive executive pay. Glass Lewis & Co and Geneva-based Ethos, which advises major Swiss pension funds that may represent up to 5 per cent of the bank’s market capitalisation, also criticised the bonuses. The pair had opposed executive and director compensation packages last year, as well, without success. Still, at that meeting, almost one in five shareholders voted to reject the proposed packages.

The Swiss federal government has published draft legislation aimed at preventing local governments from being represented on the boards of regional pension fund supervisors.

The proposal runs counter to that of a parliamentary initiative on the subject and means that there is now “competition” between the two, according to Dominique Favre, director at As-So, the supervisory authority for occupational pensions in western Switzerland.

The reform proposal, announced by the government last week, was presented mainly as “modernising” the first pillar, but it also touches on aspects of the second pillar.