Chow Time on Bahnhofstrasse
The Swiss Insider 17.05.2020 #insidersdoitsmarter
Dear Insider,
Anyone hungry?
Surely you are - if not for fine dining, then for the rest and relaxation that comes with spending a small fortune in the warmth of a fine May evening at a fine establishment on Bahnhoffstrasse or Rue des Alpes.
As one of the first in Europe, Switzerland opened up its hospitality sector after more than 4 weeks of corona lockdown and for many it could not come a moment too soon. Dining, travel and hotel accommodation are, of course, an integral part of Swiss tourism and the general hope is that when the Michelin-starred restaurants reopen the clients will come.
But that may be a false hope.
The business lunches that powered the middle range of most establishments are still a ways off - and the bus loads of Asian tourists that kept the kitchens busy in better times are not likely to return so soon.
That means it will be home-grown demand that has to support the industry for now.
Or it may mean a time of reckoning and reduced prices for hospitality as a whole. There’s not time like a crisis to make the imagination go wild with new possiblities - and new ways to do business.
Paying the Piper
Another bastian of Swiss business - the Swiss postal service is also having to rethink itself… Like its American counterpart, the service has come under greater and greater pressure for profitability and prominence.
CEO Roberto Cirillo has great visions - and plans. As it so happens a large part of the great scheme focuses on digitalization, suprise…surprise…
All in all, the roadmap calls for 3 billion CHF in investment to re-create the post office system, roll out new services and re-invent the service’s dentity from the ground up.
As Cirillo astutely points out:
People will need a new reason to go into a post office in the future.
The same could most likely be said of the many hundreds and even thousands of restaurants now waiting for customers around Switzerland.
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The Man and the “Quote”
Swiss Life CEO Patrick Frost didn’t mince his words in today’s interview with SonntagsZeitung, as he criticized the government for playing games with rent policies - and trying to put the screws on large real-estate owning concerns such as Swiss Life.
Politics takes money away from pensioners.
Some questioning of sincerity may be tolerated…
🔍 The Scoop
Inside takes that don’t necessarily make the front pages of daily news…
🏦 Best by Bilanz
Private banking in Switzerland may be on the decline, but that doesn’t keep business magazine Bilanz from celebrating the industry in its 2nd “sneaky” survey and test of its top institutions.
In an experiment shrouded in secrecy, the publication’s reporters teamed up with VALUEWorks Family Office to put bankers to the test with a test case for the investments in a private foundation. Surprisingly enough, the winners were not the top brands in the world:
Overall winner: VZVermögensZentrum
Swiss bank winner: St Galler Kantonalbank
Private bank: Julius Bär
International bank: DZ Privatbank
📉 Not Quite QUINTessential
As shopping sprees goes, the hiring run that continues at (soon-to-be) newly minted Swiss private bank Quintet is growing expensive. Reports show that the slew of private bankers that the firm has pulled in from various corners (mostly UBS) has proven expensive.
The company posted a loss of 43,7 million euros in 2019.
The Numbers Game
All the numbers that matter in Swiss business…
⏱ 24/7
Citi Bank may not be Swiss - but its Head Digital Channels Sanjeev Jain certainly has a one or two things to say to Swiss financial institutions. The krux of it? “If commerce is 24/7 - then banking needs to be 24/7 as well.” Finews has the whole conversation here.
⌚️ 6,3%
Tough times continue for the Swiss watch industry - summer tourism has yet to get the full green light and there is little chance that large influxes of Asian tourists will suddenly materialize out of nowhere.
Meanwhile, unemployment in the sector is the highest in Switzerland at 6,3%.
☎️ 350 million CHF
A cat-fight has broken out between the two largest Swiss telecoms companies - Swisscom and Sunrise. The latter is seeking damages of up to 350 million Swiss francs, plus interest, for what it calls abusive practices by the partially national-owned carrier who used a “margin squeeze” to keep Sunrise from being able to participte in the ASDL market.
💙 16%
No one quite expected it, of course… But it turns out that the Swiss National Bank is a big player in American blue chip stocks. After it was recently revealed that the SNB (at one time) held more Facebook stock than founder Mark Zuckerberg, it now seems that the national bank is going even further, with an increase of 16,3% in US stocks.