Lindt Easter bunny boosts sales, but Christmas chocolates are bigger
Kilchberg, Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss chocolate maker Lindt & Spruengli saw its operating profits (EBIT) slip from CHF33.6 million to CHF24.1m in the first six months of 2009, compared to the same period a year earlier. The company expects nevertheless to end the year with a CHF260-280m profit.
Rising cocoa prices that could not be entirely passed on to consumers in a weak economy were blamed for much of the profit decline.
Convicted mass fraudster Bernard Madoff, sentenced to 150 years prison for defrauding investors around the world of $65 billion, is reportedly very ill with cancer of the pancreas, according to a report 24 August by the New York Post. Basing its information on fellow inmates at the North Carolina prison, the Post says that Madoff is taking up to 20 pills a day for his illness. He has been invited by Native American inmates to participate in traditional ritual sweat lodge cleansings.
Berlin, Germany (GenevaLunch) – Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt smashed his own world record as he won the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds. The previous best was his 9.69 winning time at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. American Tyson Gay was second in 9.71 while Jamaican Asafa Powell was third in 9.84. According to Sports Illlustrated “It was the biggest increase in the record since electronic time was introduced in 1968.”
Details: BBC, Sports Illustrated
Montreal, Canada (GenevaLunch) - Andy Murray beat Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, a resident of La Rippe in canton Vaud. The 6-4, 7-6 victory also pushes Murray past Rafael Nadal to number 2 in the new ATP rankings. This is the highest ranking for a British player since the rankings started in 1973: Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski reached number 4.
Montreal, Canada (GenevaLunch) – The top eight players in the world all reached the quarter-finals of the Rogers Cup in Montreal: it is the first time this has happened since ATP rankings were introduced in 1973. The current top eight in order are Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Andy Roddick, Juan Martin Del Potro, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Nikolay Davydenko.
GenevaLunch is providing news with a slight delay Friday 17 July due to heavy thunderstorms in our area. As a precaution against electrical problems we turned the computers off for a while. We’re now back at work.
Morges, Vaud, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Eight cartoonists from Lebanon are guests of honour at the Morges Festival sous rire, an annual humour fest in Vaud. Le Temps online carries a sample of their views of their country.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Tamedia, which is scheduled to buy out the Swiss business of Edipresse if the competition commission approves the deal, has published less than rosy results for 2008: a 30 percent fall in profits, to CHF105.8 million. The company’s sales rose 21 percent to CHF895.7m, but this was due mainly to absorbing Bern-based Espace Media Group.
Cartoonist Patrick Chappatte
A reminder to our readers who have subscribed to the rss feed: you’re missing out on our home page Chappatte cartoons, which can’t be included in the feed (as well as our blogs), so do visit the site regularly to add a good laugh to your day!
Also please note that while automatic feeds should include all stories posted, the e-mail versions occasionally miss a story and updates.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Roche has increased its offer for shares in US company Genentech to $93, from $86.50 and is giving shareholders an extra week to consider the new offer, in order to bring the disputed takeover to a close.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Radio Cité, the former religious radio station in Geneva, which was saved from bankruptcy by a CHF1 million annual investment by Genevan Viviane de Witt’s Fondation de Chênes, has seen its audience slipping steadily since January 2007, from 1.9 percent to 1.3 percent of the French-speaking Swiss market. It was granted a license as a community service station in October, one of five stations given licenses in the Lake Geneva region, of 14 federal licenses assigned in October 2008 after months of suspense. The others are commercial stations.
Cadillac xlr 2009 by GM, appearing at the Geneva Motor Show (photo © GM)
Geneva, Switzerland (Financial Times) – General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson Tuesday told reporters at the Geneva Motor Show’s press day that the company’s 300,000 jobs in Europe are at risk if European governments do not provide emergency funding.
Updated 12:30 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Preliminary figures for Swiss gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2008 show 1.6% growth (at constant previous year prices) and 3.9% at current prices, based on averages of the four quarters. The estimated figures were released 3 March with Bern’s fourth quarter GDP report. But Q4 figures showed a fall, the second quarterly slip in a row, technically putting Switzerland into a recession (TSR, Fre).
Real Time Rome 2006: cell phones as football starts
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “For too many years we believed technology would solve problems,” and now we’re learning that’s not quite true, architect-engineer-designer Carlo Ratti says. It needs a helping hand from humanity, it turns out, or in one of the most moving (literally) projects he’s worked on, helping feet: sustainable clubbing in Rotterdam takes human energy from the dance floor, pulls it down and turns it into the electricity used for interactive visuals and to light the dance floor.
Ratti told a crowd during the Lift09 conference in Geneva last week (25-28 February) that some of the most creative thinking about sustainability is coming from individuals and small businesses.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Kudelski Group 27 February reported a loss of CHF7 million for 2008 after profits in 2007 of CHF67m, but sales have grown significantly, particularly in its digital TV division. The company in August was still forecasting 2008 profits of CHF5-10m despite a loss of CHF34.9m in the first half of the year. The group started to recover in the second half, posting a CHF27.9m profit for the period.
Group net revenues grew by 11%, with digital TV up 15.3%, and operating profit was CHF18.4m. The Group’s financial report states that the cost of migrating customers to a new “service” rather than sales model, and providing new smart cards was a major investment in early 2008 that will be fruit in 2009. “Service model revenues are expected to fully kick in starting in the second half and one-off migration costs will be substantially lower than in 2008. The Group expects improved operating profits and substantially better cash flows for 2009.”
Kudelski is a world leader in digital access systems for television.
Related story, TSR, Fre
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - People who don’t want to fight the traffic around Geneva once the Geneva International Motor Show starts can watch it all on television, available online for the first time in 2009. The web TV show will air daily at 10:00 from 2-16 March on Salon Auto TV. The show itself runs from 5-15 March.
by Catherine Nelson-Pollard
Swiss parliamentarians live a relatively simple life when they travel around, according to Jordan Davis, WRS’s journalist and political reporter: no pomp and circumstance, no motorcade accompanying them along the way. He sees many of them on the train beween Geneva and Berne when he is en route covering events when parliament is in session.
However, Swiss politics itself is not that simple and Davis attempted to explain it all last night to a group of expats and members of Glocals, the online community and social networking group. In just over an hour he gave us the facts. First of all, under “Who’s running the place?” he explained about the role of cabinet members and the recent changes within it. He ran through the main political parties and what they represent, and told us about the “magic formula.” He explained that as the parliamentarians comes from cantons with different tastes, different cultures, and different languages, consensus building is the key aim of Swiss politics, to keep things stable and well balanced.
At the moment though, not everything is calm or stable, and Davis is covering it at a very interesting time and gave a run down of recent upsets. All fascinating stuff and in a way it was a shame that the session only lasted an hour as there was obviously more to be learned and Davis could only scratch the surface. But within the time he managed to give a good, broad overview. Some interesting facts came out, such as there are only four, three-week parliamentary sessions per year, that members of parliament do have other paid jobs, and that very few of them use the interpreting headphones available to them when the house is in session as most of them understand each other’s language.
Questions asked from the audience afterwards in the Geneva Welcome Centre ranged from how the no smoking in Geneva ban fell through, to the power that cantons hold and how they can set their own tax rate, to the ongoing discussions on European unificiation.
Such was the interest shown in the event that the evening was massively oversubscribed and Nir Ofek who co-runs social network Glocals said that members signed up within hours of the event being announced. There is obviously a thirst for this kind of evening and Davis was an excellent choice to kick this off. He himself knew little about Swiss politics when he first arrived here, but he now knows an awful lot, which the audience, keen to be less of a dummy themselves and learn more, really appreciated.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Telecom conference in October will play host to several heads of state as part of its effort to point to the ICT’s (information and communication technology) ability to re-establish confidence in the economy.
Rome, Italy (TSR, Fre) – The Italian competition commission has ruled against 26 companies in a price-fixing case and is fining them €12.5 million, reports wire service Swiss TXT.
Updated 03 March: links added Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The title of the fourth annual Lift conference, “Where did the future go?” was set long before the current global crisis started making daily headlines. The idea, Lift found Laurent Haug says, came out of a feeling that we have reached a turning point with technology, where we have a need to look back to our ideas about the future as well as forward. The topic has attracted a record attendance of some 800 people to Lift09, which kicked off Thursday morning 26 February.
Neuchatel and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss hotel industry at 31 December 2008 turned in its best year since 1990, with the number of overnight stays up by 2.7%, an increase of nearly one million, to 37.3 million. Even December 2008, when the world economic crisis was well underway, saw an increase of 1.1% over the same period in 2007, a rise that the federal statistical office attributes to excellent weather and snow conditions in the mountains.
Basel and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Reuters reports that Swiss pharma giant Roche might raise the price it is offering for US biotech company Genentech from $42 billion, or $86.50 a share, which the American firm has recommended to shareholders to reject.
Medtronic, Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA and Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Medtronic, one of the world’s leading medical technology companies, with annual turnover of $12.3 billion is buying two companies to expand its transcather valve technology, used primarily for patients whose health does not permit open heart surgery to replace valves.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The school winter breaks have ended and the conference season moves into full swing in Geneva this week. The fourth annual Lift conference asks “Where did the future go?” with several workshops and speakers Wednesday to Friday, 25-27 February. Webster University holds its 14th annual international humanitarian conference, with for its 2009 theme the psychological impact of humanitarian crises. Climate change, the Reformation and how to fill out US tax forms are part of the other talks on offer in town.
Click on poster to enlarge
Swiss Life profits fall ®SwissLife
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss Life, one of Europe’s top 10 insurance companies, says its profits fell 75% last year but that its capital base improved at the end of 2008.
Geneva, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Fans of Patrick Chappatte, whose cartoons are carried by GenevaLunch, can now find his long comic journalism report on Gaza online. Le Temps published the report in its print edition earlier this month.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Jacques Aigrain, the CEO of Swiss Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance company, has left the company. Swiss Re announced the news 12 February, just days after the insurer reported an unexpected CHF1 billion loss for 2008. Aigrain, a former investment banker, joined the company in 2001 and became CEO in 2006.
Swiss debt, GDP
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss federal government has posted a CHF3.6 billion deficit for 2008 despite a budget surplus of CHF7.3b before extraordinary expenses of CHF11b.
Cisco Rolle: showing guests the quality of large-screen networking
San Jose, California, USA (Bloomberg) – Cisco is selling $4 billion of debt, only the second sale of its bonds in 25 years, as part of measures to cut costs in the face of falling sales worldwide of networking equipment.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Ciba Tuesday 10 February reported a loss of CHF564 million for 2008, compared to profits of CHF268 in 2007. Sales were down 9% for the year, reflecting a sharp drop in sales in the last quarter of the year, mainly in coatings and plastics for the automotive industry, the chemical company noted.
