Ethical…?
The two big public pension plans in Geneva are in dire straits. The local legislature is considering a bill this week that would merge them and would also provide a capital injection of almost a billion Swiss francs. The funds have pursued what is euphemistically called a mixed financing strategy. Their assets cover less than […]
Is Switzerland still a “special case”?
Apologies to my non-German speaking readers. The document to which this post refers is in German but its main points are summarized in the post. This first “oldie” post is about a speech that I gave over twenty years ago (in 1989) in Basel to an audience of about 100 Swiss bankers. At the time, […]
Advertising structured products
The graph on the left is, in a way, the poster child for all that is wrong with the structured products industry. Julius Baer are using it in their promotional materials to sell Diskontzertifikate or discount certificates. These products are extremely popular in Germany and Switzerland. Their name suggests that they represent a bargain: the […]
Inequities in equities?
By Rolf on 12 February 2015
I have written about certain idiosyncrasies of Swiss capital market regulations before. Most Swiss corporations started as family firms and, for a long time, outside shareholders were considered a mere nuisance and treated accordingly. Some remnants of that attitude remain. While there is now a reasonably modern set of rules governing listed firms, there are […]
Posted in Comments/ramblings | Tagged Beliefs, Switzerland