NEWS

              The European Central Bank decided to further cut rates and to re-start its QE program of purchasing bonds. These are one of the last decisions approved by the ECB President Mario Draghi, whose term is coming to an end soon. They came as quite shock to the market.

Commercial banks are not doing that bad considering the negative interest rates that are deeply affecting, for instance, the stock market. Swiss banks in 2018 recorded higher operating income, though assets under management shrank a bit. There are though concerns for the future due to global economic situation.

The euro has edged higher on Monday against the US dollar as its exchange rate got trigged by good news from Germany. There was a report stating that Germany plans to boost fiscal stimulus. However, the upcoming ECB meeting put a stop to better euro growths.

The Swiss National Bank hasn’t had easy life recently – it is under pressure from market experts to act in a bid to stop the appreciation of Swiss franc, and now additionally a new powerful lobby group wants it to hand over some money collected from commercial banks to the state-pension organization.

The Swiss financial regulator FINMA has granted banking licenses to cryptocurrency banks. This is a game-changing decision for fintech, crypto-market as these will be first ever crypto banks operating in Switzerland.