New BIS Secretary General Wayne Byres
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss business news is dominated this week by Roche’s glum third quarter earnings, which the company attributes to the strong franc. Sulzer, however, announced Friday 14 October that new orders are up strongly despite the franc while Syngenta shows increased sales.
Q3 financial results in
Basel-based pharmaceutical giant Roche saw its sales fall by 14 percent year-on-year at the end of the third quarter 2011: down from $28.4 billion to $24.4b.
Agrochemical firm Syngenta, also based in Basel, published its third quarter figures Friday, showing a 13 percent increase in sales, year-on-year, to CHF9.3 billion.
Industrial machinery firm Sulzer, based in Winterthur, says its new orders are up 8.2 percent to CHF2.65 billion, but that the impact of financial markets is starting to be felt in new orders and the fourth quarter is expected to be slower. “The strong Swiss franc had a significant negative translation effect on absolute figures, but the company’s global presence is a natural hedge against material impacts on profitability”, the company notes in a statement issued Friday.
Banks’ bankers get new head
The Bank for International Settlements announced 13 October that Australian Wayne Byres will be its next secretary general. Byres is an executive general manager of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), with responsibility for the supervision of large complex banks in APRA, a post he has held for the past seven years. He was earlier a senior manager in the bank supervision department at the Reserve Bank of Australia. The BIS says he will also take over as chair of the Committee’s Policy Development Group (PDG).
The BIS faces the difficult task of overseeing the new capital ratios and more that are part of Basel III, a global regulatory framework for the banking system.
Poker didn’t pay off
The Tribune de Geneve reports this week that judicial authorities in Geneva have blocked the bank accounts of 10 Americans suspected of hiding their online poker haul in the canton’s banks. A reported CHF18 million in the accounts of the founders or organizers of Full Tilt Poker, Pokerstars and Absolute Poker are under investigation, according to the paper.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Fina, the Lausanne-based international swimmers federation, has banned a number of swimmers based on doping control results, including US diver Harrison Jones and Australian water polo player James Stanton. The results date back some weeks but were recently posted by Fina. Stanton’s ban for the controversial Clembuterol, for which Tour de France cycling winner Alberto Contador tested positive, comes as the Shanghai World Championships in swimming announced a food safety programme 22 June.
The Shanghai programme says all hotels and designated restaurants for athletes, VIP officials, referees, technical officials and media stay will be checked for several substances, in addition to regular food safety checks, farm to food.
Clembuterol has been linked in a small number of cases to contamination through food.
Jones tested positive for marijuana in Iowa City, Iowa in the US 5 February and was banned for a year starting 6 April 2011. Jones, a student at the University of Southern California, won the 3-metre springboard title in Iowa City, reports USA Today. He tested positive for the substance a year earlier and received a three-month ban.
Stanton tested positive for the anabolic agent Clembuterol in September 2010 and was banned for two years, starting in October 2010.
Clembuterol tests have sparked controversy in the sports world and Wada, the Lausanne-based sports doping control agency in Lausanne, was reported by several sports publications in early to mid-June to be considering changing the rules to review positive tests on a case by case basis. Wada responded in a published statement by saying only that “each case is different and all elements need to be taken into account”.
Swiss called the most anti-American in Europe by former US ambassador
Assange calls for Obama to resign if he approved UN spying
Peter Coneway, former US ambassador to Switzerland, appointed by George W Bush
Swiss Pirate Party, a spinoff from original Swedish group, is hosting wikileaks.ch, now home to WikiLeaks
Update 15:00 Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s famed banking secrecy laws this weekend appeared briefly to have a highly unusual leak, with Postfinance, which oversees postal accounts, “confirming” in Zurich newspaper NZZ 5 December that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has applied for a Swiss Post account. Strict privacy laws in Switzerland would normally prevent the Swiss postal company and media from publishing the name of a bank account holder. The information has been published since by several other Swiss media, notably Le Temps.
The postal account information was revealed by Assange himself, on the WikiLeaks pages, and on his Facebook page, where account details are provided as part of the appeal for funds. The WikiLeaks domain is now being hosted by the Swiss Pirate Party and donor details are available on the new wikileaks.ch site, as well as on a number of international mirrored sites, to reduce the likelihood of WikiLeaks falling off the Internet map. The Swiss Pirate Party held an impromptu news conference late Friday in “a high-tech media building in Biel, Switzerland,” Associated Press reports. “Its leaders said they had no special knowledge of Assange’s whereabouts or ability to contact him, but had spoken with him weeks ago to help seek asylum in Switzerland. That was during Assange’s visit to Geneva last month when he spoke to reporters at the United Nations.” The group said it was then receiving about 3,000 hits a second on the site. The New Hampshire, USA, web hosting site that shut down WikiLeaks Friday said it was being hacked so frequently its other customers’ accounts were being jeopardized.
Postfinance spokesman Marc Andrey told GenevaLunch that there was no need for Swiss Post to confirm the postal account information, and that Postfinance was contacted only after Assange himself made the account details public, which included listing his residence as Geneva. But the Swiss group does confirm that the usual process is underway of verifying his residence, which normally takes a few days.
Ed. note: The New York Times writes that “a spokesman for the financial arm of Swiss Post, Marc Andrey, also told NZZ am Sonntag on Sunday that it was ‘reviewing’ its relationship with Mr Assange subject to proof that he has Swiss residency, owns property or does business in the country.” Andrey told GenevaLunch that he confirmed to the “the journalist” (NZZ) only that Postfinance is doing what it routinely does: check the applicant’s residence information, by asking for copies of official documents by mail. This is not a review in the sense of a special look at the application, as the NY Times story could be understood to imply. Rather, this is standard procedure.
Postfinance also confirmed to GenevaLunch that postal accounts can be opened only by Swiss residents or people residing in border areas (frontaliers) in Italy, France and Germany, or by people with clear business ties to Switzerland. (Note: Swiss passport holders can have Swiss postal accounts no matter where in the world they are living.)
PayPal has ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks, eliminating one of the easiest means for donors to send money to Assange’s group. The Swiss postal account is one of five payment options, with the credit card one also using a Swiss link.
The WikiLeaks.org site is no longer available on the internet. WikeLeak’s Facebook page was, however, giving instructions Monday morning to web site owners who want to help by mirroring the WikiLeaks site, and WikiLeaks has moved its international domains to wikileaks.ch.
WikiLeaks shows US ambassador deploring weak Swiss-American ties
Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan were freed Wednesday 25 Novmber after 16 months in captivity in Somalia, where both say they were tortured physically and mentally. Lindhout described her ordeal by phone to the Globe & Mail, saying that in her mind she escaped to Vancouver. Both say their families paid ransoms to the groups who abducted them.
Links to other sites: Canadian TV video, Herald Sun, Australia
A group of llamas and goats from an Australian circus that were stolen from the pound where police put them has been the big news story in Ireland Friday and Saturday 2-3 October, although more than 50 percent of eligible voters did turn their attention to the referendum on the European Union long enough to vote. The votes are being counted at Dublin Castle Saturday morning with 516 accredited media organizations from around the world in attendance. Ireland is the only country to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.
Meanwhile, unaware perhaps of the key vote, a group of three goats and five llamas “ran wild” on the M50 motorway near Dublin Thursday noon after their gate at the Australian Circus Sydney, staying at Tallaght, was left open. Police took in the errant animals and put them in a pound, demanding €5,500 for their return. During the night hard-working thieves took the animals, reports the Irish Times: “The thieves traversed eight fields, opened up ditches and travelled two kilometres on foot to the shed where the animals were being kept.” The owner, who says he did not know where the animals were being kept by police, suspects animal rights activists. He says the tamed animals are worth at least €2,000 each, but are useless except to circuses.
Links to other sites: Irish votes live on Irish Times
Australian Airline Qantas will cut up to 1,750 jobs and ground 10 aircraft in an attempt to stay afloat in their worst aviation downturn in years. They will also defer delivery of super-jumbo A380s and other aircraft and have decreased their profit forecast by 80 percent. The airline said Australian domestic routes would be the most heavily affected by the capacity cuts, along with routes to the US, UK and South Africa. Sydney Morning Herald
