Car driver is fine but his license was removed - Image Basel cantonal police
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police in canton Basel were busy this weekend with two speeders and an alcohol related accident in the Basel’s city centre, ending in three license suspensions.
Canton police nabbed a 56-year-old driver for going 170 kph in an 80 zone on the Basel-Campagne cantonal road. His license was immediately confiscated.
Earlier the same day, another driver, 25, was picked up for driving 101 kph in a 50 zone in Aesch and his license also removed.
Meanwhile a man in Basel was detained for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol and crashing into a city tram before driving his car into a ditch in a construction zone where was rescued from. No one was seriously injured in the accident which occurred in the intersection of Bändelgasse and Gärtnerstrasse. His license was also immediately confiscated.
The police have been stepping up radar checks to reduce the number of serious accidents.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Már Guðmundsson Thursday 20 August became the new governor of Iceland’s central bank, post he takes up after five years in Basel as deputy head of the monetary and economic department of the Bank for International Settlements. Iceland’s economy “hit the wall” according to Forbes in February 2009, with high unemployment and riots in the streets; getting the economy back on its feet is widely seen by international economic observers as a daunting challenge.
Related: Ice News, 20 August 2009
New Swiss Army knife © 2009 Photopress AG Victorinox
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Swiss customs officials near Basel 3 August seized boxes with 558 kg of imported goods for Victorinox, one of Switzerland’s two Swiss Army knife manufacturers. Acting on a judicial complaint filed eight months ago by Thomas Minder, the boss of mouthwash maker Trybol, the customs at Muttenz, canton Basel State, held 116 boxes of bags, locks, and umbrellas made in China and Taiwan with the Victorinox logo.
Victorinox markets a number of goods that have nothing to do with pocket knives, including perfume. Production of many of these products are outsourced abroad. The pocket knives are all produced in Switzerland.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Panalpina, the Basel-based freight forwarding company, announced slim profits of CHF15 million in a world freight market hit hard by the global economic crisis. Profits were down from CHF44.5m a year earlier. The company has cut costs significantly, including an 11 percent reduction in jobs, and it says that freight volume is up, 3 percent for air freight and 8 percent for ocean freight, but orders from large customers continued to fall during the period.
The company was also hit at the end of July 2009 with a court complaint in Texas, USA, from Deccan Value Advisors, a US-based investor with 5 percent of the company’s shares, over losses linked to stock market value of the company.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Austrian police are investigating a case of possible arson at a hunting lodge in Bach, Austria, near Innsbruck, that belongs to Daniel Vasella, CEO of phamaceutical giant Novartis. More than 100 firemen put out the blaze, which witnesses say broke out early 3 August out after a dull explosion was heard at the property. According to a Novartis spokesperson, a “professional fire accelerator” was used.
But who will take our money to finance the mortgage?
Update 25 July 07:20 Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Two well-known Swiss cooperative banks, Migros and Bank Raiffeisen, have made changes in recent weeks to their policies concerning customers who are US citizens, or who are resident in the US. Specifically, both banks refuse all contact from the US. The steps taken by the banks, who are best known for mortgages and retail banking to middle-class customers, are a clear indication that US pressure is having an impact on the Swiss banking system. The moves are part of a trend that saw UBS in July 2008 alert non-US citizens who were resident in the US that their accounts would be closed as it reduced its US business.
Ironically, it is Americans trying to lead normal lives and pay their bills through their banks who are most affected – not the infamously wealthy and stealthy people the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is hunting down. Also affected: Swiss citizens living in the US and people of other nationalities who have at some point lived in both countries. These are not the mythical secret, numbered accounts made famous by the likes of James Bond, but typical Swiss bank accounts covered by data protection laws in Switzerland.
The problem is complicated for US citizens and residents living outside the US because, according to American Citizens Abroad, a Geneva-based group, US banks are increasingly applying “due diligence” rules to refuse banking services outside the country.
Bank for International Settlements, Basel: Botta tower
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Basel Committee for Banking Supervision, together with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, its home, make up the relatively quiet, staid face of international banking, but data and other news coming out of their offices in the western Swiss city lately are creating more ripples than usual in financial circles.
Two weeks ago, 13 July, the Committee published its new Basel II rules, used by banks to calculate the capital they must set aside to offset risk.
