SWI swissinfo

The numbers are clear: with CHF11.7 billion ($11.8 billion) in exports, some CHF80 billion of investments and 194,000 employees, Britain is one of the most important business locations for Swiss firms. What is less clear is how the picture will look if Britain leaves the European Union.

Half of the 185 companies, from both countries, recently surveyed by the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce (BSCC) believe their economic outlook will be poorer if Britons vote to leave the EU on June 23. Only 13.5% think prospects will improve with a Brexit while just over a third say business will be unaffected.

But the anonymous Idea attached to the survey (see below) highlight the confusion that surrounds the potential split.

Comments from the BSCC survey

“Our ability to passport into the EU through London would need to be clarified in the renegotiation process and although no changes are expected for two years, there will be uncertainty and market volatility and consequently other options may become more attractive bases. However a decision to move from London would also be very complex in that two-year period.”

"My business is a Swiss SARL so I am assuming that business will not be directly affected if the UK leaves the EU."

"I am running a Swiss SARL as a 'frontalier'. It is altogether possible that if Britain leaves the EU, this will no longer be possible (t has only been possible since 2004 with the free movement of people bilaterals) and I will have to shut down my company. This will benefit precisely no-one. Already, I will make no additional investment in the period leading up to the referendum. In short, this is only bad for smaller British business."

“My business is strongly focused on the UK and I am very conceed about the immediate, medium and long term consequences of a potential vote for the UK to leave the EU,” states another firm. “I fear that Brexit will present insurmountable challenges for the country and will significantly impact upon its relative attractiveness.”

“Being a European bank, if Britain leaves the EU, we will have to adapt our set up and probably leave many businesses currently run out of London. Overall it will impact costs and changes, so it will be both negative for our firm and negative for Britain as we will have to lay-off many employees.”

The fact is, companies in both countries are frantically trying to work out which way the wind will blow if Britain chooses the Swiss route to EU relations.

Such forthright Idea are made under the cover of anonymity. In Switzerland, bosses are reluctant to break silence for fear of being accused of interfering in foreign politics, angering shareholders or simply because they have not formed a clear enough picture of all possible eventualities.

The few executives who have been enticed into speaking out on Brexit also give mixed opinions. “Every company would be forced to re-evaluate the implications of investing in the UK,” Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck told Sky News in January.

But Sergio Ermotti, chief executive of UBS bank that employs 5,500 staff in London, gave a more optimistic assessment, albeit couched in caution. "I expect that we would keep a strong presence but that depends on a lot of factors which today are not yet clear,” he told Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung earlier this month.

Lobby groups

The consensus opinion is that it would take Britain two years to prise itself free from the EU. And then it would have to renegotiate relations with the EU and the rest of the world as an independent entity. That has resulted in a lot of question marks conceing the potential future lay of the land.

This is reflected in the contrasting stances of Swiss business lobby groups. “There will be no sudden shock or catastrophe if Britain leaves the EU,” Jan Atteslander of the Swiss Business Federation (economiesuisse) told swissinfo.ch. “The world will still be the same on June 24. What will be different is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the future of the economic integration in Europe of the British economy.”

Furthermore, Atteslander believes that the markets have already priced a potential Brexit into currency exchange rates. In other words, because many investors have already hedged their currency bets in light of a possible split, the pound and euro will not sink too drastically against the franc unless the markets are hit with unexpected news regarding Brexit.

However, Atteslander also thinks that companies will factor in the current economic uncertainty when deciding how much money to invest in Britain in the short-term.

Currency risks

Swissmem, the lobby group for electrical engineering, metals, fine tools and machine building firms, has a more pessimistic stance. Its member firms ship 4% of their goods to Britain.

“In the short-term, a Brexit would increase uncertainty in the EU,” Swissmem said in a written statement to swissinfo.ch. “This could have consequences on the franc-euro exchange rates. We would assume an upward pressure on the franc with subsequent [negative] consequences for the export industry.”

In the long-run, a Brexit would weaken the EU economically, in the view of Swissmem. This would spell further bad news for Swiss companies.

Switzerland Global Enterprise (s-ge), a govement agency that facilitates foreign trade for Swiss firms, told swissinfo.ch that the companies it advises “in most cases don’t plan to react in terms of reviewing their strategy or similar until the situation has become more predictable.”

Swiss-British trade

Last year Swiss firms sent around CHF11.7 billion of exports to Britain and received some CHF6.6 billion of imported goods (without jewels or precious metals). That makes Britain the fifth largest receiver of Swiss goods and the eighth largest provider of imports to Switzerland.

If precious metals and jewellery are included to the statistics, Britain is the second largest supplier of goods to Switzerland.

Switzerland’s record of investing in Britain is even more impressive. At CHF78.7 billion (2013), Britain is the third largest beneficiary of direct foreign investments (buildings and machinery) by Swiss companies. At the end of 2013, Swiss firms employed 193,700 people in Britain – the fourth largest concentration of Swiss paid jobs abroad.

By the end of 2013 British firms had invested an accumulated CHF21.3 billion in Switzerland, creating 26,800 jobs. HSBC, Vodafone, BP and Unilever have the biggest Swiss presence of all British firms, according to the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco).

swissinfo.ch

SWI swissinfo...

With audiences of half a million in Switzerland and 2.4 million worldwide, Alain Gsponer’s remake of Heidi has been hailed as the most successful film in the history of Swiss cinema. This claim is hard to verify, due to the lack of long-term statistics. Anyway, what makes a Swiss film?

In a country where cinema is largely subsidised by the govement, one would expect there would be detailed statistics on the success of any given film at the box office, its appearance at festivals and the number of prizes it received. That is not the case.

There aren't many figures available and they basically conce the domestic market. As far as inteational success is conceed, not even Swiss Films, the agency that promotes Swiss cinema, was able to provide complete data. So it cannot be said for certain that Heidi is the most watched Swiss film of all time, although the figure of 2.4 million viewers is certainly impressive.

At the national level, the most informative source is the Federal Statistical Office, which has compiled a list of the 500 most successful Swiss films from 1976 to the present.

The verdict of this list is clear: in the past 40 years, the most popular film was the satirical comedy The Swissmakers (1978) with about a million viewers. Ironically, the govement of the day declined to subsidise the film, which humorously depicted the tortuous procedures for naturalisation in Switzerland and questioned matters of national identity.

The success of this film does not surprise Frédéric Maire, who heads Cinémathèque Suisse, the national film archive. “The theme of foreigners and nationality was the focus of political debate at the time. And the main actor, Emil Steinberger, was a star. He was one of the few Swiss-German actors to break through the language barrier.”

Now, what about the new Heidi? With more than 500,000 tickets sold, a film by Alain Gsponer would come fifth in this ranking. Note the “would”. It is hard to determine the nationality of a particular film – the federal statisticians list only films that are 100% Swiss or else mainly Swiss co-productions. This criterion is also used for film statistics throughout Europe. Although it was directed by a Swiss director, Heidi is a majority German co-production. So it doesn’t qualify for the list.

It should be emphasised that the Federal Office of Culture uses less restrictive criteria and considers Heidi a Swiss film. The making of the film was partly supported by the Swiss govement and it is nominated for a Swiss film award.

Hits of the 1940s and 1950s

While govement statistics cover the past 40 years, the origins of Swiss cinema go back far beyond 1976.

Trying to get a more complete picture, swissinfo.ch consulted a history book by Hervé Dumont*, former head of Cinémathèque Suisse. It tus out that some films of the post-war years were even more successful than The Swissmakers, both at home and abroad.

One of these was Marie-Louise (1944), which was seen by more than a million people in Switzerland alone. At the time, Swiss cultural productions were heavily influenced by the govement’s home-front propaganda campaign to bolster supposedly “Swiss” values in opposition to dictatorships abroad.

The film by Leopold Lindtberg fits in with this trend. He creates an idyllic picture of Switzerland through the eyes of a young French refugee. Acclaimed by the New York critics, Marie-Louise was the first European film to appear on American screens following the end of the war, and the first foreign film to win an Oscar for best screenplay.

A year later, Lindtberg retued to the theme of refugees and created another major success for Swiss cinema, Last Hope. The film came out only 18 days after the German surrender and became a worldwide success. In Switzerland it was seen by over a million people, and the New York Times counted it among its top ten films of 1946.

Another high-profile director at the time, Franz Schnyder, drew 1.6 million viewers with his peasant drama Uli der Knecht (1954) – and this was at a time when Switzerland had only five million inhabitants! The same year saw the release of Heidi and Peter, also by Schnyder. It was the first Swiss colour film, and it enjoyed inteational success thanks to a major advertising campaign in New York.

*Information in this article comes from the book “Histoire du cinéma suisse – Films de fiction 1896-1965”, by Hervé Dumont, 1987.

You can contact the authors of this article on twitter: Duc-Quang Nguyen and Stefania Summermatter.

Swiss Film Awards

On March 18 the winners of the “Swiss Oscars” were announced. Below are some of the nominations; the winners are in bold:

Best film (each nominee receives CHF25,000)
Amateur Teens (Niklaus Hilber)
Heimatland (Jan Gassmann, Jonas Meier, Benny Jaberg, Tobias Nölle, Lionel Rupp, Lisa Blatter, Gregor Frei, Michael Krummenacher, Carmen Jaquier, Mike Scheiwiller)
Köpek (Esen Isik)
La Vanité (Lionel Baier)
Nichts Passiert (Micha Lewinsky)

Best documentary
Above and Below (Nicolas Steiner)
Als Die Sonne Vom Himmel Fiel (Aya Domenig)
Dirty Gold War (Daniel Schweizer)
Grozny Blues (Nicola Bellucci)
Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow And All Music Has Disappeared (Stefan Schwietert)

Heidi was nominated only in the category “best actor”, with Bruno Ganz (the prize went to Patrick Lapp for La Vanité). This decision was criticised by several industry figures and film critics.

Translated from Italian by Terence MacNamee, swissinfo.ch

SWI swissinfo...

An American street photographer with an eye for the details of human life that aren’t always the prettiest, but which show us for who we really are. The crumpled trousers of a man clutching a woman’s hand in the street. An older gentleman snoozing on the job.

Vivian Maier lived in Chicago for most of her life, although she was a French citizen. She was bo in New York in 1926 to a French mother and Austrian father. After spending some of the first part of her life in France, she worked as a nanny in the United States.

She would take the children out for the day, her Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera slung around her neck, and take snaps as she went along. What she created was a vast number of images showing everyday life in America in the second half of the 20^th century. She took pictures of families in her neighbourhood, children playing with tyres on the street, couples eating dinner in run-down apartment buildings or young men on their way to work.

Maier stopped working as a nanny in the 1990s and died in 2008 after sustaining a head injury from slipping on ice. She had been keeping her collection of negatives in a storage facility, but ran out of money to pay the rent on it two years before her death. The contents ended up at auction.

One of the images caught the eye of John Maloof, a real estate agent who dabbled in work as an amateur historian in his spare time. He got his hands on a vast collection of 30,000 negatives for the mere sum of $400 (CHF399). As he began to sort through the negatives, he came across Maier’s name, searched for her on the inteet and discovered her death notice, published in a newspaper a few days earlier.

Maloof started to post Maier’s images online and was gradually contacted by people interested in photography who told him he had something special on his hands. The fame of the photos grew, and word spread, leading to exhibitions in the US and Europe. Maloof has carried on buying up negatives created by Maier and now has more than 100,000.

Taking the Long Way Home, is the first solo exhibition of the work of Vivian Maier in Switzerland. It runs at the Photobastei in Zurich, from March 3 to April 3. The exhibition has more than 150 prints, focusing on Maier’s time in New York (early 1950s) and in Chicago (1956).

(Text: Jo Fahy, pictures: Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York)

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Links

SWI swissinfo...

The numbers are clear: with CHF11.7 billion ($11.8 billion) in exports, some CHF80 billion of investments and 194,000 employees, Britain is one of the most important business locations for Swiss firms. What is less clear is how the picture will look if Britain leaves the European Union.

Half of the 185 companies, from both countries, recently surveyed by the British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce (BSCC) believe their economic outlook will be poorer if Britons vote to leave the EU on June 23. Only 13.5% think prospects will improve with a Brexit while just over a third say business will be unaffected.

But the anonymous Idea attached to the survey (see below) highlight the confusion that surrounds the potential split.

Comments from the BSCC survey

“Our ability to passport into the EU through London would need to be clarified in the renegotiation process and although no changes are expected for two years, there will be uncertainty and market volatility and consequently other options may become more attractive bases. However a decision to move from London would also be very complex in that two-year period.”

"My business is a Swiss SARL so I am assuming that business will not be directly affected if the UK leaves the EU."

"I am running a Swiss SARL as a 'frontalier'. It is altogether possible that if Britain leaves the EU, this will no longer be possible (t has only been possible since 2004 with the free movement of people bilaterals) and I will have to shut down my company. This will benefit precisely no-one. Already, I will make no additional investment in the period leading up to the referendum. In short, this is only bad for smaller British business."

"Our ability to passport into the EU through London would need to be clarified in the renegotiation process and although no changes are expected for two years, there will be uncertainty and market volatility and consequently other options may become more attractive bases. However as decision to move from London would also be very complex in that two year period."

“My business is strongly focused on the UK and I am very conceed about the immediate, medium and long term consequences of a potential vote for the UK to leave the EU,” states another firm. “I fear that Brexit will present insurmountable challenges for the country and will significantly impact upon its relative attractiveness.”

“Being a European bank, if Britain leaves the EU, we will have to adapt our set up and probably leave many businesses currently run out of London. Overall it will impact costs and changes, so it will be both negative for our firm and negative for Britain as we will have to lay-off many employees.”

The fact is, companies in both countries are frantically trying to work out which way the wind will blow if Britain chooses the Swiss route to EU relations.

Such forthright Idea are made under the cover of anonymity. In Switzerland, bosses are reluctant to break silence for fear of being accused of interfering in foreign politics, angering shareholders or simply because they have not formed a clear enough picture of all possible eventualities.

The few executives who have been enticed into speaking out on Brexit also give mixed opinions. “Every company would be forced to re-evaluate the implications of investing in the UK,” Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck told Sky News in January.

But Sergio Ermotti, chief executive of UBS bank that employs 5,500 staff in London, gave a more optimistic assessment, albeit couched in caution. "I expect that we would keep a strong presence but that depends on a lot of factors which today are not yet clear,” he told Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung earlier this month.

Lobby groups

The consensus opinion is that it would take Britain two years to prise itself free from the EU. And then it would have to renegotiate relations with the EU and the rest of the world as an independent entity. That has resulted in a lot of question marks conceing the potential future lay of the land.

This is reflected in the contrasting stances of Swiss business lobby groups. “There will be no sudden shock or catastrophe if Britain leaves the EU,” Jan Atteslander of the Swiss Business Federation (economiesuisse) told swissinfo.ch. “The world will still be the same on June 24. What will be different is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the future of the economic integration in Europe of the British economy.”

Furthermore, Atteslander believes that the markets have already priced a potential Brexit into currency exchange rates. In other words, because many investors have already hedged their currency bets in light of a possible split, the pound and euro will not sink too drastically against the franc unless the markets are hit with unexpected news regarding Brexit.

However, Atteslander also thinks that companies will factor in the current economic uncertainty when deciding how much money to invest in Britain in the short-term.

Currency risks

Swissmem, the lobby group for electrical engineering, metals, fine tools and machine building firms, has a more pessimistic stance. Its member firms ship 4% of their goods to Britain.

“In the short-term, a Brexit would increase uncertainty in the EU,” Swissmem said in a written statement to swissinfo.ch. “This could have consequences on the franc-euro exchange rates. We would assume an upward pressure on the franc with subsequent [negative] consequences for the export industry.”

In the long-run, a Brexit would weaken the EU economically, in the view of Swissmem. This would spell further bad news for Swiss companies.

Switzerland Global Enterprise (s-ge), a govement agency that facilitates foreign trade for Swiss firms, told swissinfo.ch that the companies it advises “in most cases don’t plan to react in terms of reviewing their strategy or similar until the situation has become more predictable.”

Swiss-British trade

Last year Swiss firms sent around CHF11.7 billion of exports to Britain and received some CHF6.6 billion of imported goods (without jewels or precious metals). That makes Britain the fifth largest receiver of Swiss goods and the eighth largest provider of imports to Switzerland.

If precious metals and jewellery are included to the statistics, Britain is the second largest supplier of goods to Switzerland.

Switzerland’s record of investing in Britain is even more impressive. At CHF78.7 billion (2013), Britain is the third largest beneficiary of direct foreign investments (buildings and machinery) by Swiss companies. At the end of 2013, Swiss firms employed 193,700 people in Britain – the fourth largest concentration of Swiss paid jobs abroad.

By the end of 2013 British firms had invested an accumulated CHF21.3 billion in Switzerland, creating 26,800 jobs. HSBC, Vodafone, BP and Unilever have the biggest Swiss presence of all British firms, according to the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco).

swissinfo.ch

SWI swissinfo...

With audiences of half a million in Switzerland and 2.4 million worldwide, Alain Gsponer’s remake of Heidi has been hailed as the most successful film in the history of Swiss cinema. This claim is hard to verify, due to the lack of long-term statistics. Anyway, what makes a Swiss film?

In a country where cinema is largely subsidised by the govement, one would expect there would be detailed statistics on the success of any given film at the box office, its appearance at festivals and the number of prizes it received. That is not the case.

There aren't many figures available and they basically conce the domestic market. As far as inteational success is conceed, not even Swiss Films, the agency that promotes Swiss cinema, was able to provide complete data. So it cannot be said for certain that Heidi is the most watched Swiss film of all time, although the figure of 2.4 million viewers is certainly impressive.

At the national level, the most informative source is the Federal Statistical Office, which has compiled a list of the 500 most successful Swiss films from 1976 to the present.

The verdict of this list is clear: in the past 40 years, the most popular film was the satirical comedy The Swissmakers (1978) with about a million viewers. Ironically, the govement of the day declined to subsidise the film, which humorously depicted the tortuous procedures for naturalisation in Switzerland and questioned matters of national identity.

The success of this film does not surprise Frédéric Maire, who heads Cinémathèque Suisse, the national film archive. “The theme of foreigners and nationality was the focus of political debate at the time. And the main actor, Emil Steinberger, was a star. He was one of the few Swiss-German actors to break through the language barrier.”

Now, what about the new Heidi? With more than 500,000 tickets sold, a film by Alain Gsponer would come fifth in this ranking. Note the “would”. It is hard to determine the nationality of a particular film – the federal statisticians list only films that are 100% Swiss or else mainly Swiss co-productions. This criterion is also used for film statistics throughout Europe. Although it was directed by a Swiss director, Heidi is a majority German co-production. So it doesn’t qualify for the list.

It should be emphasised that the Federal Office of Culture uses less restrictive criteria and considers Heidi a Swiss film. The making of the film was partly supported by the Swiss govement and it is nominated for a Swiss film award.

Hits of the 1940s and 1950s

While govement statistics cover the past 40 years, the origins of Swiss cinema go back far beyond 1976.

Trying to get a more complete picture, swissinfo.ch consulted a history book by Hervé Dumont*, former head of Cinémathèque Suisse. It tus out that some films of the post-war years were even more successful than The Swissmakers, both at home and abroad.

One of these was Marie-Louise (1944), which was seen by more than a million people in Switzerland alone. At the time, Swiss cultural productions were heavily influenced by the govement’s home-front propaganda campaign to bolster supposedly “Swiss” values in opposition to dictatorships abroad.

The film by Leopold Lindtberg fits in with this trend. He creates an idyllic picture of Switzerland through the eyes of a young French refugee. Acclaimed by the New York critics, Marie-Louise was the first European film to appear on American screens following the end of the war, and the first foreign film to win an Oscar for best screenplay.

A year later, Lindtberg retued to the theme of refugees and created another major success for Swiss cinema, Last Hope. The film came out only 18 days after the German surrender and became a worldwide success. In Switzerland it was seen by over a million people, and the New York Times counted it among its top ten films of 1946.

Another high-profile director at the time, Franz Schnyder, drew 1.6 million viewers with his peasant drama Uli der Knecht (1954) – and this was at a time when Switzerland had only five million inhabitants! The same year saw the release of Heidi and Peter, also by Schnyder. It was the first Swiss colour film, and it enjoyed inteational success thanks to a major advertising campaign in New York.

*Information in this article comes from the book “Histoire du cinéma suisse – Films de fiction 1896-1965”, by Hervé Dumont, 1987.

You can contact the authors of this article on twitter: Duc-Quang Nguyen and Stefania Summermatter.

Swiss Film Awards

On March 18 the winners of the “Swiss Oscars” will be announced. Here are some of the nominations:

Best film (each nominee receives CHF25,000)
Amateur Teens (Niklaus Hilber)
Heimatland (Jan Gassmann, Jonas Meier, Benny Jaberg, Tobias Nölle, Lionel Rupp, Lisa Blatter, Gregor Frei, Michael Krummenacher, Carmen Jaquier, Mike Scheiwiller)
Köpek (Esen Isik)
La Vanité (Lionel Baier)
Nichts Passiert (Micha Lewinsky)

Best documentary
Above and Below (Nicolas Steiner)
Als Die Sonne Vom Himmel Fiel (Aya Domenig)
Dirty Gold War (Daniel Schweizer)
Grozny Blues (Nicola Bellucci)
Imagine Waking Up Tomorrow And All Music Has Disappeared (Stefan Schwietert)

Heidi was nominated only in the category “best actor”, with Bruno Ganz. This decision was criticised by several industry figures and film critics.

Translated from Italian by Terence MacNamee, swissinfo.ch

SWI swissinfo...

As part of an inteational project called "Inside Out" by the French street artist JR, Geneva-based photographer Mark Henley shot 51 portraits of asylum seekers in their homes fuished by the canton of Geneva.

Their faces, shown at ground level, have proven irresistible to passersby. Does the fascination stem from the rejection felt by migrants and refugees or is it a function of how pedestrians come across the portraits?

Only one night after the installation was set up at a roundabout in Plainpalais – a big open space in the center of the city that sports a skate park, and is regularly used for flea and farmer markets, amusement rides, and Switzerland’s leading circus, Knie, at the start of each school year – vandals and rain severely damaged the portraits.

It was a deliberate act of racism, according to Henley, who is based in Geneva and has twice won the Swiss Press Photo Award. Nearly all the portraits feature young men of color. Henley repaired the damage by installing new prints on the ground, but only a few hours later they were again damaged (see gallery).

The project coordinator, who has had the support of the cantonal office for social and financial assistance, says they knew vandalism might result. "We were aware of such a possibility. Once installed, these portraits belong to the people, like everything that JR does,” said Jessica Tabary, an art therapist. Even so, the incidents beg the question whether it is reasonable or respectful to give passersby – and vandals – the chance to walk all over or destroy the portraits of lives already uprooted.

The 51 portraits can be viewed at a subsequent exhibition opening next week at the Galerie La Cave. There will also be selfies shot by the refugees around the city, along with pictures taken by photographer Juliette Russbach of the refugees interacting with various others in the city such as firefighters, police and dancers.

SWI swissinfo...

Voters last month rejected a proposal to ban speculation in food products but not as overwhelmingly as had been expected. Another people's initiative dubbed “For Responsible Business” is now directly aimed against the commodities sector which has a strong presence in Switzerland and is regularly targeted by civil society organisations.

“The business world has realised how unpopular it is. It will need to work hard to improve its image,” the Le Temps newspaper wrote the day after the Feb 28 vote initiated by the Young Socialists. They had hoped to outlaw financial instruments that allow speculation in food products.

The text may have been rejected but more than 40% of citizens put a “yes” slip into ballot boxes although experts had forecast 25-30% of yes votes at most, given the topic.

“This is a good result for an idealistic, left-wing initiative,” gloated Jo Lang, a leading member of the Green Party. Others have even spoken of “critical success”.

The left had banks and investment funds in their crosshairs but also commodities traders.

Switzerland is home to about 500 companies specialising in this field, all business lines combined, including giants such as Glencore-Xstrata, Cargill, Vitol and Trafigura. They employ about 10,000 people and contribute nearly 4% of the country's GDP. That is more than the tourism industry.

Multinationals dealing in that much-maligned trade may have cleared one democratic hurdle but they are now bracing themselves for more ballots.

In canton Geneva, widely considered a business mecca, the repeal of the special tax status accorded foreign multinationals, which will lead to general corporate tax cuts, will most certainly be challenged in public vote.

A major debate on the contribution these firms make to the common good will take place, and who knows what the outcome will be.

Less radical initiative

At the national level, another initiative, aimed at “responsible business”, is on track. The text was launched in 2015 by more than 70 civil society organisations in a bid to write binding rules into law to ensure that Swiss companies respect human and environment rights in the course of their activities abroad.

The most disputed point of the initiative conces the liability of these companies before Swiss courts for offences committed by their subsidiaries abroad.

This initiative is less radical than the one presented by the Young Socialists but a majority of voters may well fall for it, says Florian Wettstein, a lecturer in corporate ethics at the University of St Gallen and a member of the initiative committee.

“The business community is still putting up resistance to restrictive measures but there is a major shift in the way ordinary people think. Many believe that these multinationals have a duty to respect basic rights wherever they operate in the world.”

The initiative is aimed at all those companies with headquarters in Switzerland, and there are many: the country hosts the highest concentration of multinationals anywhere in the world, making it a prominent player in several sensitive sectors such as pharma and agrochemicals.

Still, the commodities sector, which is over-exposed by the very nature of its activities in developing countries, is the top target of non-govemental organisations (NGOs).

It has tried to be more transparent over the past few years but it remains “very secretive and very opaque, partly because a large number of companies dealing in this trade are small and not listed on an exchange market,” Wettstein says.

New strategy

As for citizens, they have few direct levers for action since these firms never come into contact with end consumers.

Hence the adoption of a new strategy by NGOs: they are no longer content with acting as whistleblowers and now approach the political arena directly through petitions or at a parliamentary level.

If need be also by using direct democracy tools.

Representatives for the industry, which is still little known in Switzerland, have been feeling the heat.

“Our sector is facing worsening general terms as well as uncertainty to do with new legislation and people's initiatives which may affect investments in the country,” says Stéphane Graber, secretary general of the Swiss Trading and Shipping Association (STSA), the sector's umbrella organisation.

The STSA is reluctant to comment on an initiative which is still at the signature collection stage but it has issues with “extraterritorial application of the law, which is not the tradition of Switzerland,” Graber says.

A threat is looming between the lines: delocalisation to less scrupulous places such as Singapore, another booming business hub which has been wooing companies based in Switzerland.

Wettstein finds this particularly irritating.

“These companies say they are not here only to take advantage of tax benefits and nominal regulations but also because of political stability, proximity to major banks and the large qualified manpower they find here. Yet every time we want to put an end to their tax breaks or we demand more restrictive rules, they threaten to leave.”

Translated from French by Beatrice Murail, swissinfo.ch

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Staffan de Mistura, the chief negotiator in Syrian peace talks now underway in Geneva, visited Be on Wednesday to thank the Swiss govement for its “discreet” and fundamental role in making the talks possible.

Flanked by the leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate foreign affairs committees, de Mistura praised the Swiss for their “discreet, efficient and creative” approach to diplomacy without which the latest round of peace negotiations would not have been possible.

“There are many moments where you can thank a country for its engagement with a particularly difficult, historic negotiation,” he said. “It’s always easy to say thank you before or after, but not during, when you are busy doing other things.”

Roland Büchel of the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee chose not to elaborate on the Swiss role in the negotiations, telling swissinfo.ch only that “we are not just serving coffee, of that I can assure you”.

It has been reported in the past that the Swiss have helped opposition forces prepare for peace talks by training them in how to negotiate.

De Mistura said of the talks underway that “there is a concerted effort being made here in Switzerland to move forces that have, until now, been considered almost impossible to move. There is enough will to take these negotiations seriously and there exists, for the first time, the support of the inteational community”.

He also suggested that the Russian move to pull back its military from Syria earlier this week may have been made purposefully to coincide with the start of the peace talks.

“I hope this gives diplomacy a chance,” he said.

Govemental model?

When asked whether Switzerland could provide aid in ultimately forming a new Syrian govement, de Mistura cautioned against implementing a strong federalist system as had been done in Iraq and Afghanistan, pointing out that those countries “remain starkly divided”.

However, he did point to Switzerland as a potential democratic role model.

“Syria can lea a lot from how the political formula for co-existence of cultures and languages in Switzerland produced a miracle that we still regard with interest.”

He added that a political division of Syria should be avoided at all costs.

However, speaking in Zurich on Wednesday, French Syria expert Fabrice Balanche expressed a lack of optimism that a unifying solution could be found in the near future. He sees major divisions forming in the country, especially along religious lines, “fueled by regional powers who want to expand their influence in the region”.

Where things stand

A ceasefire in the Syrian conflict, overseen by Russia and the US, came into effect on February 27. Weste govements say this has considerably reduced the intensity of the fighting. However, ceasefire violations are regularly reported and fighting persists in some places.

On Wednesday, de Mistura also highlighted the progress, though “still insufficient”, being made on gaining access for humanitarian aid groups.

Jan Egeland, de Mistura’s adviser on humanitarian aid, has said that since the ceasefire accord, UN and partners have delivered aid to ten besieged areas, but six important besieged areas, including Daraya and Douma, have not been reached. Opposition groups continue to say not enough aid is getting through.

The fragile ceasefire has offered some hope to ending a war that has cost over 250,000 lives, driven 13.5 million people from their homes and given an opening to radical groups like the Islamic State and Syria’s al-Qaeda branch, the Nusra Front, to seize land. Those groups are not part of the diplomatic efforts.

With input from John Heilprin, swissinfo.ch

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At least four jihadist fighters with connections to Switzerland have been uncovered in Islamic State personnel files that have been obtained by the media.

The huge haul of papers documenting 22,000 IS recruits was first seen by German reporters before being handed to Swiss public television SRF and the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper. They give real names, the fighting pseudonyms of individuals, their religious experience, family details, where they are from and have lived and whether they have volunteered as fighters or suicide bombers.

Joualists are convinced that the personnel files are real having tested some of the details, such as telephone numbers. Independent experts have also said the files appear to be genuine. The documents date from between August 2013 and March 2014.

Two of the Swiss-based individuals were previously known to the authorities, as SRF’s 10vor10 programme showed.

The two previously unknown fighters are a 45-year-old man, originally from Egypt, who also lived in the Lake Geneva area before volunteering as an IS fighter.

The file also list a 39-year-old married man with two children who lived for 11 months in Switzerland before being recruited to IS.

Apart from the fighter who is serving community service in Switzerland, the current location of the others is unknown.

The four are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Swiss jihadists fighting abroad. Last November the Swiss intelligence services said they were monitoring around 70 people who had either travelled abroad to take part in conflicts for the jihadist cause or were engaging in other suspicious activity.

In addition, Swiss intelligence said last summer that it believed that 15 jihadists with Swiss links were believed to have been killed in fighting.

While there has been some media suspicion that a handful of jihadists may have been radicalised at a minority of Swiss mosques, experts believe that the most common source of recruitment is the inteet.

A recent Zurich University of Applied Sciences study into the radicalisation of Swiss youngsters looked at 66 cases recorded between 2001 and July 2015.

The team of 11 researchers found that 16 out of 66 cases were aged below 25. Most were aged 23-35. Only three women were reported, below European averages of 10%.

The majority of cases were bo Muslims from former Yugoslavia and Somalia. Twelve were recently converted, half of Swiss origin. Twenty cases were radicalised via the inteet, 13 claimed to have been influenced by war experiences, particularly in the Balkans, while 13 pointed to Salafist propaganda.

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Destocking new watches and selling them through alteative channels is a taboo subject in the Swiss watchmaking industry. It’s a growing phenomenon spurred on by the business slowdown in some regions of the world and the fact that retailers are drowning in unsold goods.

In watchmaking circles, they call him Momo the Cleaner. Maurice Goldberger, founder and manager of Canadian company Chiron Inc. specialises in the sale of unsold goods manufactured by the most prestigious brands. His business is booming. In 2015, he bought up around the world more than €500 million (CHF541 million) worth of new luxury items which could not be sold through official channels, including nearly CHF150 million worth of watches and jewels.

“2016 got off to a flying start and the market is still expected to grow over the next few years,” he gloats in a telephone interview with swissinfo.ch.

Goldberger often travels to Switzerland to negotiate with watchmakers. Very discreetly.

The brands may seek his services but they are very careful not pose for pictures next to him. He won't reveal anything either about the identity of his Swiss suppliers or his clients. Also, he never wears any timepiece on his wrist in order to avoid it being misrepresented. His inteet site has a grand total of three addresses - in Malta, the United States and Canada - and an email address (he answers emails almost simultaneously).

All watchmakers are eager to cultivate the concept of exclusivity associated with their products and they are aware of the danger that such practices entail for their image.

“The ambiance, the experience and the service provided in an official store are very important for the prestige of the brand. There is a real danger that control may be lost when new watches are sold by alteative channels at knock-down prices,” says François Courvoisier, professor of watchmaking marketing at the University of Applied Sciences of the Jura region.

In North America mostly

Yet Goldberger believes he is an essential cog in the wheel of fine mechanics by which the watch trade operates. “Unsold goods are a fact of life, no company can avoid this. When stocks accumulate, they mobilise important capital which cannot be used for investments in new equipment or new models, for instance.”

Goldberger's trade has always been around. But with new collections being launched ever more often, the inteet sales boom and the increasingly industrialised production of high-range watches, the phenomenon has grown. So much so that, according to estimates, one Swiss mechanical watch in four is sold through alteative channels at a reduced price.

These structural changes are compounded by a cyclical factor. Watchmaking has faced an unprecedented slowdown since the 2008 financial crisis. A number of reasons have been given for this: sluggish growth in China, war in Ukraine and in the Middle East, plummeting oil prices, the strong Swiss franc.

“Many dealers did not see these geopolitical changes coming. They find themselves burdened with large stocks of unsold items which are less attractive as time goes by. This is a problem for brands because retailers do not have the cash or space to buy new collections,” Goldberger says.

At a time when stocks are overflowing in Hong Kong or China, many timepieces are heading for outlets which have stores in the United States or Canada. “

Our growth is particularly strong in North America, where buying a second-hand watch at a cheaper price is seen as a smart thing to do. Things are more difficult in Europe and Asia because people are reluctant to admit that they cannot afford new items at full price,” he says.

Distinguishing genuines from fakes

In Biel, one of the country's main watchmaking towns, the Swiss Watchmaking Industry Federation says it has “next to no information” about this growing phenomenon.

“Officially, there is no such thing as destocking. Some companies go as far as to get their official distributors to sign a contractual prohibition. But we can see that the reality is quite different,” says Michel Aoux, the head of the federation’s anti-counterfeiting department.

For lovers of beautiful watches who may not have a sizeable bank account, acquiring a prestigious timepiece with a 30, 40 or 50% discount, if not more, can, on the face of it, be a real bargain.

But Aoux has a word of caution: “Counterfeits and genuine products are mixed together in second-hand shops and outlets. This is a fact. This makes the situation very complicated for customers, even if they have in-depth knowledge of watch products. The same applies to stolen watches which systematically end up for sale through these alteative channels.”

On the inteet, where Swiss watch sale sites abound, the danger is even greater, was Michel Aoux: He says many sell watches which they describe as second-hand products or from the ‘grey market’ (not the originally intended market) , “when in fact they are sheer counterfeits.”

Maurice Goldberger, for his part, says all his products are sold on through proper channels – outlets, ad hoc private sales, etc. - and in the geographical areas selected by brands.

“I do not fuel the grey market,” he says. And what about the inteet? “There are thousands – dozens of thousands even – of e-commerce websites but only a hundred of them have a good reputation. I only work with these people.”

Need for transparency

You could be forgiven, however, for getting lost in the jungle of sales channels offering Swiss watches at a reduced price on the grey market, through dealers who are not official but tolerated by brands, whether they are (not quite) second-hand watches or counterfeits which look increasingly like the genuine article.

“When one compares for instance with the car market, watchmakers are fighting yesterday's battles when it comes to the sale of second-hand products on alteative channels, on the web in particular,” says Courvoisier.

An idea would be to list retail outlets licensed by brands or to set up a kind of watchmaking version of the travel review website TripAdvisor. Consumers would then be able to give ratings to their dealers on the basis of product quality or after-sales service.

“We are still a long way away,” says Courvoisier. “Swiss watchmaking is a world with a culture of discretion, secrecy even. But it should be more transparent.”

Translated from French by Beatrice Murail, swissinfo.ch

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