Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The latest UK company to move hedge fund managers to Geneva is Blue Crest, Europe’s third largest hedge fund group, in a move that the Financial Times suggests heralds “a trend for part-relocations.” The company is moving 50 of its managers to Geneva, out of a head office staff of some 300. Blue Crest was created in 2000 and is worth $15.5 billion today.
The company plans to move staff at a time when the European Union is considering a pay cap for alternative investment managers; Switzerland has many bilateral agreements with the European Union but is not a member.
Home sweet home
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Home loans, which account for 90 percent of bank credits in Switzerland, have grown by 5.2 percent in the first nine months of 2009, with the rate of increase up most strongly since March. And while the rate of growth of corporate loans is down, they, too, continue to grow.
“There is no credit crunch,” Manuel Jetzer, Geneva region head of Credit Suisse declared at the annual press conference of the Geneva Financial Centre 14 October. “There is no credit contraction in Switzerland.”
Much of the thanks for this goes to the home loan business, which is benefiting from historically low interest rates, with some banks offering new loans for as low as 1.65 percent*.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Ivan Pictet, president of the Geneva Financial Centre, has been actively promoting bank secrecy this week in a number of interviews with Swiss media. In a key interview with Le Temps, published Tuesday 24 February he argues that the loss of banking secrecy would reduce the size of Switzerland’s financial centre by half. It currently represents 6-7% of the country’s GDP, with CHF1,100 billion in foreign wealth under management.
