The Swiss company Sika AG was founded 105 years ago by Kaspar Winkler, who invented a waterproofing product that catapulted the company to success when Swiss Rail started using it in 1918 to waterproof Swiss train tunnels. The company, which now employs over 16,000 staff worldwide and generated CHF 5 billion of revenue in 2014, […]
Costly Swiss drugs – why pain continues despite strong franc
Medicines are expensive in Switzerland and while a number of groups such as Santé Suisse are working hard to secure savings, the problem of relatively high prices continues. High drug prices persist in Switzerland for three key reasons. 1. Too many branded drugs There are two kinds of drugs: branded and generic drugs with expired-patents. […]
How the strong franc helps Swiss business
Switzerland is an expensive place to locate a business. The strong Swiss franc makes nearly everything expensive. On the face of it this seems like a handicap, however in the end it is arguably an advantage. High costs force businesses to innovate to create products that command a price premium or to find hi tech […]
Top 10 Swiss employers in 2015 – only one foreign
On 1 April 2015, the recruitment agency Randstad, announced the 10 winners of its 2015 best-Swiss-employer awards. Those surveyed were asked how much they would like to work for those companies with at least 1,000 staff. These responses along with other aspects such as career prospects, work environment, pay, work-life balance, training, job security, quality […]
British Royal bank accounts not moving to Switzerland
According to Reuters the Swiss bank Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) will buy Coutts, the British bank famous for having British royalty among its clients. UBP will however only buy Coutts’ international business, so the British accounts of the royals will not be included in the deal as the UK arm of Coutts remains with Royal […]
Orange to disappear from Switzerland
The phone brand Orange Switzerland, recently bought by the French billionaire Xavier Niel, will not be around for much longer. The business, originally part of Orange S.A. in France, was acquired by Apax Partners, a private equity firm in 2012, and then eventually sold to Niel late in 2014. Now the new management have now […]
Swiss banks swell as Greek ones empty
More and more Greeks are deciding that leaving their money in a Greek bank is not worth the risk. The Economist reported that households and private firms withdrew €24.6 billion from Greek banks between December and February. The capital controls and bank balance “haircuts” in Cyprus in 2013 set a precedent that some fear could […]
5 surprising facts about the Swiss National Bank
The Swiss National Bank (SNB) has an important job. Its failure to control inflation could erode the real value of our savings – 7% inflation over 10 years would halve the real value of a bank deposit. Likewise high inflation would most likely come with high mortgage interest rates – an 8% mortgage rate would […]
Sunrise still struggling
Switzerland’s second largest phone company by revenue, Sunrise Communications Holdings SA, released its results on 26 March 2015 showing a smaller loss for 2014 than for 2013. Sunrise listed on the Swiss stock market (ticker symbol: SRCG) on 6 February 2015, in the largest Swiss IPO since 2006. This allowed it to repay some of […]
Swiss coffee capsule war hots up
Jean-Paul Gaillard the boss of the Swiss coffee capsule maker Ethical Coffee Company (ECC) said recently that he expects sales of his coffee capsules to exceed those of Nespresso, owned by Nestlé Group, within three years, according to the newspaper Tribune de Genève. Unlike Nespresso capsules the Nespresso-compatible ECC ones are biodegradable. According to ECC’s […]
