Lukoil's international operations faced mounting disruptions on Friday as a U.S. deadline for companies to cut off business with the Russian oil company looms and after a hoped-for sale of the operations to Swiss trader Gunvor collapsed, Reuters reported. The U.S. Treasury, which would have to approve any sale as Lukoil is under U.S. sanctions, on Thursday labelled Gunvor a Kremlin "puppet" and signaled its opposition to the deal.

Swiss efforts to secure a more favourable trade relationship with the U.S. are ongoing, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said on Thursday, after Swiss corporate bosses met with U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week, Reuters reported. Switzerland was left reeling after Trump imposed tariffs of 39% on Swiss imports in August, among the highest duties levied in his global trade reset. Keller-Sutter, who has come under fire for her handling of the dispute, said she had fulfilled her duties as Switzerland's president when she spoke to Trump before the tariffs announcement.

Swiss software company LzLabs GmbH sought US bankruptcy court recognition of its foreign insolvency case to halt patent infringement litigation brought by tech giant IBM and preserve its stateside intellectual property, Bloomberg Law reported. LzLabs faces severe financial distress following a 20 million pound ($26.7 million) UK judgment issued in IBM’s favor in March as well as IBM’s parallel US suit, the company said in a Chapter 15 bankruptcy petition filed on Oct.

Swiss private bank Julius Baer is facing significant credit losses after financing real estate projects linked to Germany's now-insolvent Degag Group, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Monday. The bank has filed claims for 48 million euros ($55.74 million), which exceeds its 2023 profit in Germany, the paper said, citing a preliminary report to the insolvency administrator. The matter is a blow for Julius Baer, which last year reported losses of 586 million Swiss francs on loans to collapsed property company Signa.

Swiss authorities' 2023 decision to write off 16.5 billion Swiss francs ($20.53 billion) in Credit Suisse bonds was unlawful, a court said on Tuesday, raising fresh questions about how the bank's rescue and subsequent takeover by UBS was handled, Reuters reported. The March 2023 decision by market regulator FINMA to wipe out Credit Suisse's Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds during the state-engineered takeover by its old rival UBS triggered an investor backlash and legal challenges. In a partial decision, the court said the 2023 AT1 bond write-off lacked a legal basis.

Inflation in Switzerland remained close to zero last month, according to figures released a week after the Swiss National Bank paused a series of rate cuts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 0.2% higher in September than the same month of last year, matching the rate of inflation in August, Switzerland’s statistics agency said Thursday. The Swiss central bank left its key interest rate at zero at its latest meeting at the end of last month, ending a sequence of six straight cuts.

Switzerland’s central bank left its key interest rate at zero Thursday, ending a sequence of six straight cuts, despite the threat of slower growth as the economy adjusts to one of the highest tariffs set by President Trump, the Wall Street Journal reported. Investors had mostly expected the decision after comments from officials at the central bank that signaled a reluctance to push the key rate back below zero, where it settled for almost eight years until September 2022.