NEWS

Many companies in Switzerland start to blame European economic slowdown, global trade turmoil, as well as woes in German’s car industry as reasons for their weaker sales and financial results. Brands influenced by Europe’s woes include, among others, EMS-Chemie Holding AG. Meanwhile OECD has revised the economic growth outlook for Switzerland downwards.

Commercial banks in Switzerland managed to hit higher profits in 2018, while mortgage loans reached CHF1 trillion level, as consumers took advantage of low interest rates – these are some of findings of the SNB report for 2018 on the condition of private banks’ – both domestic and foreign-controlled – industry.

The operator of the Swiss stock exchange, SIX Group revealed it would like to see the Swiss National Bank issuing some form of cryptocurrency that would be used to settle payments on SIX’s new digital assets platform. SIX is about to launch the platform and is looking for a mean of settling transactions on it.

The franc continues to get stronger against the euro. The euro franc exchange rate fell below the 1.1115 francs per euro today after 15:00, which is the lowest level since 2017.

FED has started on Tuesday 18th June its two-day meeting that will end with a statement on economic forecasts. Investors highly anticipate the statement, and this had influence on currencies’ exchange rates on Tuesday and Wednesday.