ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The KOF, the economic research institute at the University of Zurich has upgraded its forecast for the Swiss economy in 2012, noting that the 0.8 percent rise hides a stronger upward swing towards the end of the year.
The group notes in a press release: “Private consumption will make the biggest contribution to growth. Exports will come out weaker due to the effects of the strong franc and stagnation in Europe. The labour market looks robust, unemployment figures will remain at 3.2 percent, a very low level by international standards.”
The outlook for exports is more negative than figures released Thursday by the federal statistical office imply. “The outlook for the export economy is mixed,” reports the KOF.
“The companies involved–foremost in the tourism industry–have to live with a strong currency that will squeeze margins.
Tourism (–1.4%) and other service exports (–0.7%) will shrink again this year. Growth in exported goods (1.5%) will be lower than last year (6.2%). The overall result is a growth in exports of 0.8%.“Imports will grow faster, 3.7%, whereby the trade balance with the GDP will be negative in 2012. Stronger growth in exports (4.7%) is also expected for the next year in the wake of the upswing, but the rate will still lag behind imports (7.9%).”
Swiss economy, 2012 forecast, source: KOF economic research institute in Zurich
CS bank bosses find pay deals down
Credit Suisse is cutting the pay packages of senior managers, with chief executive Brady Dougan receiving CHF5.8 million, less than half of what he earned the previous year. Overall, compensation packages at the bank are down from CHF14.6 million in 2010 to CHF13.2m in 2011, with the bank saying in February that it was cutting its bonus pool by 41 percent after seeing profits fall 62 percent last year. The Group issued its annual report 23 March.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – UBS, Switzerland’s largest banks, will cut 3,500 jobs by the end of 2013, it announced Tuesday morning 23 August, in an effort to reduce expenses by CHF2 billion. The news has been expected for some weeks and, says the bank, is in line with its statement in July about costs.
The cuts are needed, says UBS, to improve operating efficiency. “Of the expected 3,500 staff reductions, approximately 45% will come from the Investment Bank, 35% from Wealth Management & Swiss Bank, 10% from Global Asset Management, and 10% from Wealth Management Americas.”
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Europe’s largest retail bank, HSBC in the UK, announced job cuts 1 August that will reached 30,000 by the end of 2013, joining Switzerland’s UBS and Credit Suisse, as well as other large banks that have announced major staffing cuts in the past two weeks as financial markets fail to bounce back as expected from the 2008-09 global economic crisis. Credit Suisse expects to cut 2,000 jobs and UBS has not yet confirmed the number it will eliminate.
The HSBC job cuts were announced along with financial results that show a 36 percent increase in profits to $9.22 billion from $6.76 billion a year earlier. The bank is preparing to meet higher capital requirements under new Basel III world bank regulations.
Business Week reports that HSBC’s proportion of profits from Asian business rose to 76 percent, up nearly 10 percent compared to a year ago, while the share of its expenses based in Asia were just over 46 percent. Job cuts will occur in its offices worldwide, but the bank is likely to be hiring in Asia.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Swissinfo, SSR’s foreign language online news service and the largest web-based provider of news in English about Switzerland, will undergo major staffing cuts in the next 18 months, saving CHF9 million a year from its CHF26m annual budget. The savings will be split equally between SSR, Switzerland’s public broadcast company, and the Swiss federal government, which has mandated Swissinfo’s work.
The rationale appears to be to ensure the longer-term feasibility of Swissinfo in an online world that has changed radically since it was created 10 years ago, a phoenix rising from the ashes of the old Swiss International Radio. Swissinfo’s target audience is primarily foreigners interested in knowing more about Switzerland and the Swiss abroad. Its mandate has been, since the beginning, to provide in-depth information to foreigners on political, economic cultural and social aspects of Switzerland.
The site had traffic in 2009 of 23.7 million visits and about three times as many pages viewed. Its Facebook page is one of the most successful of any European media, with more than 100,000 fans, a figure that climbs to 200,000 if other social media platforms are taken into account.
Swissinfo was recently given a mandate by the government to add a tenth language, Russian.
Two-thirds of the staffing cuts will be technical and support staff, some of whom will be reassigned to SSR, and one-third will be editorial staff, mainly in Switzerland’s national languages with the three languages (French, German, Italian) regrouped as one editorial unit.
Two-thirds of the jobs lost will be through retirement or early retirement or reassignment, leaving 12-13 posts to be cut.
Swissinfo publishes in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish and soon Russian.
One-quarter of jobs to go
The BBC’s long-discussed budget cuts have finally hit, and it means that five countries will lose World Service broadcasts entirely, while in some other countries programming will be reduced. The five are: Macedonian, Albanian and Serbian services plus English for the Caribbean and Portuguese for Africa.
Audiences are expected to fall by 30 million to 150 million. The BBC is looking to save £46 million a year.
The cuts, needed to meet the government-mandated savings of 16 percent, involve the loss of 480 jobs initially, with a total of 650 within four years, out of 2,400 jobs currently.
The BBC in September 2010 had already announced programming cuts that including dropping daily hour-long special coverage of Wimbledon tennis and the Proms music programmes.
Some of the cuts will be offset, the BBC says, by be looking for partnerships in India, Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa. It also plans to increase online videos.
The BBC World Service began operating in 1932.
Links to other sites: China Digital Times on the impact on Chinese BBC service, Guardian, Rapid TV News, Telegraph
Marketing boss, deputy director general posts axed
The marketing chief of the BBC, Sharon Baylay, is being dismissed and will not be replaced, and two board members are leaving, the British public media organization has announced. Baylay’s is one of the first significant departures in a series of expected job cuts that are part of the company’s efforts to reduce senior management by 18 percent and pay for the group by 25 percent, reports the Guardian. The announcement follows shortly after the news that the post of deputy director general will end once Mark Byford, 52, whose salary is £475,000, leaves the job in June 2011, according to the BBC.
British civil servants are striking for a second day, Tuesday 9 March, over cuts in redundancy pay, while Portugal’s government has announced austerity measures that could match those of Greece. In other world financial news, Aer Lingus announced losses for 2009 of €81 million that are four times the loss in 2008, just three days after cabin crrew rejected a negotiated €97 million plan to cut costs.
Link to other sites: Irish Times, RTE, Ireland, Deutsche-Welle
Reuters news video
Universities in the US are being hurt by the global economic crisis, with endowments shrinking, reports National Public Radio in the US. Even Harvard, which has long had the largest endowment in the country, saw it fall from $37 billion in July 2008 to $26 billion today.
rough sailing for swissinfo
Bern, Switzerland (romandie/ats, Fre) – The CHF26 million budget for Swissinfo could be cut by one-quarter, or some CHF7 million, the board of SSR, its parent company says. It has ordered the head of the Internet site, TSR and DRS (Swiss German radio) to study a series of options for streamlining operations in order to cut costs.
