ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland’s largest bank, UBS, said Thursday 17 November that it will strip down its investment banking business and reduce its risks to concentrate on global wealth management and its private banking business in Switzerland. The restructuring was detailed at an investors conference in New York, with new chief executive Sergio Ermotti giving his first major address.
The bank now manages CHF1.4 trillion in invested assets under its wealth management businesses.
Ermotti was confirmed in his post two days ago after two months in the job as the interim CEO.
The bank will cut more than 300 jobs in addition to the 1,500-plus it announced in August, in the next four years. These will be mainly through investment banking attrition. The investment banking business will be reduced by nearly half, with the current CHF300 billion in risk-weighted assets cut by CHF145b.
The group’s capital is expected to rise as a result, to about 13 percent as a result, above the requirements of the stringent new Basel III rules.
The Financial Times points out that the bank’s new strategy parallels to some extent that of other international banks and in particular Credit Suisse, but “the two Swiss groups differ from their big international rivals in their emphasis on private banking as the central and growing part of their business.”
The bank says it plans to pay a dividend for 2011.
Credit Suisse says its job cuts are mostly outside Switzerland
Lausanne is feeling the pinch of the strong franc, with job cuts at Kudelski and now Bobst
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Machine tools manufacturer Bobst says it will cut 8 percent of its 5,300-strong workforce by 2013, as part of restructuring. Most of the 420 jobs that will be lost are in Lausanne while the company relocates some of its work. “Owing to the exchange rate situation and the need for market proximity, activities and functions with low added value can no longer be carried out competitively in Switzerland,” the company says in a statement issued Tuesday 8 November.” In addition to outsourcing non-core activities, “the job reductions are achieved mainly by discontinuing temporary and fixed-term contracts, as well as through early retirements and normal staff turnover.”
The firm also intends to introduce short-time working of 15-35 percent, the Swiss solution of partial unemployment, starting in January 2012, for six months to give the restructuring plans time to have an impact on the group’s financial situation.
The company must take “drastic measures” to remain competitive, chief executive Jean-Pascal Bobst says in a statement issued Tuesday 8 November.
Porto, Portugal, 2011. Where will the jobs come from?
GENEVA / ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Credit Suisse Tuesday 1 November confirmed weekend rumours that it is cutting jobs, saying it will reduce its global staff head count by 3 percent (some 1,500 jobs), while Kudelski in Lausanne announced it will cut 270 jobs, most of them in Switzerland.
The ILO (International Labour Organization) in Geneva, in the runup to the G20 meeting in XX, says that 80 million jobs need to be created worldwide to return to pre-crisis levels, but it is likely that only half this number will be created.
“The new World of Work Report 2011: Making markets work for jobs says a stalled global economic recovery has begun to dramatically affect labour markets,” the ILO says in a statement issued Monday 31 October. “On current trends, it will take at least five years to return employment in advanced economies to pre-crisis levels, one year later than projected in last year’s report.”
See: ILO interactive statistical world map, unemployment
Swiss bank’s latest redundancies: now 7% of workforce leaving
Credit Suisse announced Tuesday 1 November that it is looking for new cost savings of CHF0.8 billion by the end of 2013, in addition to savings of CHF2 billion announced earlier.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Cisco, which has three Swiss offices, including one in Rolle in canton Vaud, was busy presenting its latest products at Cisco Live in Las Vegas, Nevada Wednesday 13 July while the business rumour mill was grinding out stories about expected layoffs that could be as high as 10,000, according to Bloomberg Monday, or between 5,000 and 7,000 according to the Wall St Journal Wednesday.
The California-based company employs more than 73,000 people worldwide and has annual revenues of $10.9 billion.
Chief executive office John Chambers appeared to give some credence to the rumours with a keynote speech at the Cisco Live event where he talked about a leaner company that will cut costs by about $1 billion during its next fiscal year, saying the company has become too complex. Cisco has been promising a reorganization that will get innovative products to market faster. The company has so far declined to comment on the number of jobs that will go, and Chambers said Wednesday that a final decision has not yet been made.
The job cuts are expected to be announced in August.
The accent on Wednesday was Cisco’s role in providing cloud-related products. The company is best known as a computer network equipment maker. Reuters, in a review of the new products presentation notes that the company is now the second provider of servers in the US, “behind only HP, commanding 19.7 percent of the market. While other business units are struggling to maintain, servers have grown into nearly a billion-dollar business in less than two years.”
The ink was barely dry on the $315 million sale of the Huffington Post to AOL, a deal that closed Monday, when the online media company announced Thursday 10 March that it is cuttiing nearly 1,000 jobs. The company employs 5,000 people worldwide. The US operation will see 200 jobs axed, but India will get the brunt, with 400 jobs disappearing and another 300 being outsourced. The job cuts are part of restructuring to integrate the two companies, but they come on the heel of some 2,000 jobs lost through dismissals and voluntary departures since November 2010.
AOL was an early online media services leader, but it has struggled to keep up. The Huffington Post aggregates news but also produces original content, and it has become a major news supplier in the US. Stock in both companies hit their lowest point in weeks on the news.
Links to other sites: Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Telegraph
Sun setting on power generation by Alstom. ©ALSTOM 2010
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The French energy and transport group, Alstom, has announced the reduction of 4,000 jobs world-wide.
The most heavily affected countries will be Germany, the USA and Switzerland, where 750 jobs are at stake.
Alstom referred to markets where investment in new energy equipment has been most affected by the economic crisis in its release 4 October, and said that 1,000 of the jobs to go will involve the temporary contracts which will not be renewed and natural attrition.
Alstom is Canton Aargau’s biggest private employer and has added hundreds of jobs there in the past. Many of those jobs are expected to go.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland’s largest health insurance company, Helsana, is reportedly considering cutting 500 jobs, according to an ATS article 10 March. The news agency received a copy of an internal company memo. Helsana had a loss of CHF215 million in 2008, followed by a loss of CHF58m in 2009, and the company’s reserves and capital have fallen in the past two years. The internal note reportedly says that the company’s administrative costs are 10 percent higher than the industry average and increasing efficiency while cutting jobs is now necessary.
The company has not responded to the reports that have appeared in Swiss media today.
Links to other sites: Helsana (Fre), TSR (Fre), Comparis for comparative health insurance in Switzerland
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Journalists will be spared but 100 of their colleagues in support services at SSR, Swiss Public Broadcasting Corporation, will lose their jobs between now and 2014. Support services, with 735 employees, include: computer services, real estate, logistics, human resources, training, communications, marketing, and accounting.
SSR owns TSR television, RSR radio and WRS English radio, in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
Muttenz, Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Chemicals company Clariant has announced layoffs of 500 employees, 400 of which are in Switzerland, as it continues to restructure. The company suffered sharp losses in 2008, largely due to a sudden drop in the auto industry. The company has since then shed more than 3,000 jobs. It is now moving its textile dyes and textile chemicals division to Asia. The company employed 1,200 people in Switzerland at the end of 2009.
The company’s sales were down 18 percent in Swiss francs in 2009 over the previous year, to CHF 6.6 billion. Clariant reduced its net debt to CHF545 million from CHF1.2b at the end of 2008. Net debt divided by equity was at 29 percent by the end of 2009, well down from the 61% at the end of 2008.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The cost of subscribing to a Swiss daily newspaper will rise in 2010, between 1 and 11 percent, to keep in step with increased costs and lower advertising revenues. The rise is even greater in reality in some cases such as the NZZ, when a mid-2009 increase is taken into account, notes ats/TSR. The newspaper’s editor, Markus Spillmann, has written to subscribers saying that “High quality information is an expensive product.”
The traditional income balance has been one-third subscriptions and two-thirds advertising, but with the latter falling dramatically for several months, readers are now being asked to foot a larger share of the bill. Newstand prices are also set to rise.
The rising cost of Swiss papers, according to ats/TSR, includes:
- Le Matin and 24 Heures, CHF379 to CHF389
- Le Temps, 11 percent, from current price of CHF432 for 13 months
- NZZ, from CHF488 to CHF512.
Background, GenevaLunch
Job cuts at Swiss rail
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland’s national railway company CFF plans to cut between 300-350 administrative jobs in the infrastructure division, its spokesperson Reto Kormann said 20 November. It hopes to save CHF60 million a year. The company will not lay off anyone: the jobs will be eliminated by attrition and internal reassignment.
Links to other sites:Le Temps, Romandie News
More Swiss media cuts on the way
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Edipresse, the largest media company in French-speaking Switzerland, announced Friday 9 October that it will cut nearly 10 percent of its workforce: 100 jobs, with half in its print units, some 30 journalists’ positions and the rest in production. The company has 1,124 full-time equivalent positions in Switzerland. Half of its approximately 3,000 employees work outside the country. Details about which jobs are affected will follow later. The group will begin consultations next week with staff representatives: Edipresse Romande (French-speaking area) has collective agreements with staff, although it has not had such agreements in German-speaking areas in the country.
The latest round of job cuts is due largely to a 25 percent drop in advertising since 2008, with “no improvement in sight”, the company says.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Le Temps, the main serious newspaper in French-speaking Switzerland, is making several changes to cope with a sharp drop in advertising revenue, cutting 7.5 percent of its editorial staff (10 jobs). It says the subscription price will be raised for 2010. The newspaper says that the advertising revenue decline, which has hit the entire industry, is the worst in 60 years and requires dramatic action. GenevaLunch spoke with another newspaper editor from the region Monday, who said more cuts can be expected at other newspapers in the region in the next two months. Le Temps notes that it was able to keep the job cuts at this level because of offers by several staff to reduce the number of hours they work.
Le Temps editor Jean Jacques Roth explains in a lengthy editorial that subscriptions and newsstand sales rarely cover more than one-third of a newspaper’s revenues but in the past few years costs have risen due to competition from free newspapers’, readers’ rising expectations for coverage, development of web sites, and in the case of Le Temps, good growth in readership.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss industrial group Oerlikon AG announced a drop in sales in the first half of 2009 of 40 percent to CHF1.4 billion, and negative earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of -CHF164 million. The company announced 25 August that its CEO, Uwe Krueger, is stepping down effective immediately and said board member Hans Ziegler will take over until a new CEO can be named.
The company cut 1,500 jobs in the first half of 2009, reduced hours for 2,300 workers, and announced restructuring costs of CHF130m for all of 2009. Oerlikon announced 25 August that it will cut an additional 2,500 jobs.
Related: TSR (Fre)
© Sulzer
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Swiss engineering giant Sulzer is to cut 1,400 jobs or 11 percent of its workforce across all divisions by the first half of 2011, the company announced this morning 24 June. The cuts will come mostly in the European and American divisions. The company says it will attempt to reduce the number of direct firings by encouraging voluntary retirements, through natural attrition, and a reduction of outsourced labour. It hopes to achieve savings of CHF110 million.
Lake Geneva region, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Publicitas, one of the main advertising sales organizations in the region, will curs its workforce by 89 people at the end of 2009, with 70 of those as redundancies. Fourteen of them will be given an offer by media publisher Edipresse.
Zurich, Switzerland (romandie/ATS, Fre) – NZZ, German-speaking Switzerland’s main serious newspaper, said Wednesay 17 June that it will cut 20-25 jobs among its IT staff as part of plans to merge some of its operations. The cost-cutting measure will not touch the editorial staff. NZZ laid off 24 employees (20 fulltime posts) in late 2008. The newspaper also said it is studying sharp increases in subscription rates and the possibility of charging for some of its online content, notably financial reporting and commentary by its best-known journalists.
NZZ posted a loss for the first quarter of 2009, with advertising down by 30 percent from January to the end of March. Its Internet operations are operating at a loss that is currently CHF3 million, reports ATS. (2007-2008 figures). The Zurich newspaper is the latest media group in Switzerland to announce job cuts, in a string of actions to try to turn around the hard-hit newspaper, magazine and online news business.
Subway trains in London, England are likely to come to a halt for two days, with drivers on strike from 19:00 Tuesday 9 June until late Thursday. Their union is calling for higher pay. PR-Inside
British Airways last week told staff that it is seeking 2,000 voluntary redundancies among the 14,000 flight crew members, raising fears of a strike by airline staff this summer, according to the Times. The company announced a £401 pre-tax loss 22 May, the worst in the company’s history, due to a mix of falling business travel, a high pound and high fuel costs. Guardian
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss federal Competition Commission has decided to look more closely at the situation that will be created by a morning newspaper distribution agreement that could leave almost no competition in German-speaking Switzerland and parts of French-speaking Switzerland. The commission concluded after a preliminary review that further study is needed. Tamedia, NZZ and La Poste are seeking to cut costs by joining forces to distribute papers.
In another development linked to the increasingly difficult situation of Swiss media, several hundred journalists took to the streets in Zurich and Bern Tuesday 26 May over editorial staff job cuts announced by Tamedia.
Dupont, the third largest chemical company in the US, announced 21 April that net income fell 59 percent, from April 2008, to $489 million. The company will cut 2,500 jobs worldwide as part of belt-tightening measures. Sales plummeted as client industries, notably the automotive industry, weakened, but the company says Q2 sales should be stronger, as client stocks run down. Profits remained in line with analysts expectations in the first quarter. Dupont lowered profit forecasts for 2009 to $1.70-2.10 a share, from an earlier projected $2.00-2.50. Bloomberg
Updated 22:00 with links on reactions Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UBS shareholders meet today, 15 April, to approve the new governing board of the bank at the annual general meeting (AGM). Before the doors opened the bank had made a pre-announcement that first quarter 2009 losses amount to nearly CHF2 billion and that it will cut 8,700 jobs, for a global workforce that will be reduced to 67,500 in 2010. Nearly one-third of the bank’s employees are in Switzerland and 2,500 of the job cuts will be in Switzerland, with 1,200-1,500 of them through layoffs. UBS says it expects to cut costs by CHF3.5 to 4 billion by the end of 2010, compared to 2008 costs.
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
Two major US city newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, are cutting salaries and jobs as well as other costs in a dismal market that is worsening, they say, with print advertising revenue falling off sharply and online revenue, growing from a small base, not increasing rapidly enough to offset the losses. Reuters
Lausanne, Switzerland (romandie/ats and 24 Heures, Fre) – The downturn in the Swiss mass media market continues, with the announcement, 23 February, of January figures for ad sales, on which media depend for the bulk of their revenues: down 8.7% compared to January 2007, to CHF249.5 million. Edipresse, the Lake Geneva region’s largest media publisher, announced it will lay off 25 staff, representing 16.5 fulltime equivalent jobs, at its Bussigny printing operation, at least in part because of fewer advertising inserts.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – UBS, Switzerland’s largest bank, has announced a fourth quarter loss of CHF8 billion, higher than most analysts’ forecasts, bringing the bank’s loss for 2008 to CHF19.7b, due primarily to losses on risk positions in investment banking.
Updated 15:40 Peoria, Illinois, USA (GenevaLunch) – Caterpillar, whose European government affairs office, with financial and marketing services, is in Geneva, announced Monday that it will cut 20,000 jobs in the expectation that 2009 will be its worst year since world war two.
Sony will cut about 8,000 jobs, 4% of its workforce, in an effort to save over $1 billion. The troubled firm, whose shares have fallen 70% in 2008, is making the larges job reductions to date in Asia.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Credit Suisse Thursday morning announced that it is cutting 5,300 jobs, mostly in investment banking and by mid-2009, as part of a series of maneuvers to reduce costs. The news, confirming rumours that have circulated this week, comes with the bank’s notice of a modest profit in November, but a loss of about CHF3 billion for the fourth quarter, due to “a significant pre-tax loss” in investment banking in October.
Citigroup added to the gloomy economic news that started Monday with an announcement of recession underway in Japan by telling investors that it will reduce its workforce to 300,000 people but cutting 50,000 jobs. In the past four quarters, reports CNN, the bank has trimmed 23,000 jobs.
