Switzerland

The board of a Swiss-based trust fund managing some $3.5 billion in frozen assets seized after the Taliban took power last year is meeting in Geneva for the first time on Monday, a Swiss government spokesperson confirmed, Reuters reported. The frozen central bank reserves were recently transferred from Washington into the 'Fund for the Afghan People' where U.S. officials say it will be shielded from the Taliban. The latter has condemned the transfer, calling it a violation of international norms. The agenda of the meeting is not yet public.

Garrett Motion Inc., a maker of turbochargers and other automotive equipment, is exploring strategic options including a sale, Bloomberg News reported. The Rolle, Switzerland-based company is working with an adviser on a possible sale. Garrett is expected to attract interest from companies looking to enhance their electric-vehicle operations. Garrett, originally known as Honeywell Transportation Systems, was spun off in 2018. It filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2020 after struggling with loan repayments.

Credit Suisse has taken measures to reduce risks and improve its capital situation, Swiss banking supervisor FINMA said on Thursday after the bank unveiled a sweeping overhaul, Reuters reported. "It is clear that FINMA will continue to monitor that all the supervisory requirements are met during the implementation phase of the new strategy," it said in an emailed statement in response to a Reuters query.

The Swiss National Bank is following the situation at Credit Suisse closely, SNB Governing Board member Andrea Maechler told Reuters on Wednesday. Switzerland's second-biggest bank saw its shares slide by as much as 11.5% and its bonds hit record lows on Monday, before clawing back some of the losses, amid concerns about its ability to restructure its business without asking investors for more money. "We are monitoring the situation," Maechler said on the sidelines of an event in Zurich.

Switzerland exited the era of negative interest rates on Thursday when its central bank joined others around the world in tightening monetary policy more aggressively to combat resurgent inflation, Reuters reported. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) raised its policy interest rate by 0.75 of a percentage point, ending the country's seven-and-a-half year experiment with negative rates which sparked opposition from its financial sector and fears of asset bubbles. The increase to 0.5%, from minus 0.25%, followed a 50 basis point hike in June from minus 0.75%, the SNB's first rate hike in 15 years.

A Swiss court has granted the operating company for the never-opened Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was built to bring Russian gas to Germany but put on ice shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, a four-month extension to its “stay of bankruptcy,” the Associated Press reported. The stay for Nord Stream 2 AG was extended from Sept. 10 through Jan. 10 by a regional court in Zug canton (state), according to a notice published Thursday in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce. The company, a subsidiary of Russia’s Gazprom, is based in Zug.

Sanctioned Russian lender Sberbank PJSC caused the bankruptcy of the Antipinsky Oil Refinery in Western Siberia, according to Swiss trader New Stream Trading AG, Bloomberg reported. Sberbank “had full control of the management of Antipinsky” from mid-November 2018 and took steps leading to it “procuring the breaches” of the refinery’s existing contracts, NST said, quoting from a ruling by a tribunal constituted under the London Court of International Arbitration.

Ongoing inflationary pressure means further monetary policy tightening will likely be needed, Swiss National Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan said on Wednesday, after the central bank last week raised its interest rate for the first time in 15 years, Reuters reported. "We published a new inflation forecast. If you interpret it correctly, you see that there's a certain need probably to tighten further," Jordan told a conference in Zurich. "We don't exactly know when and how much, but this inflationary pressure is not yet combated completely," Jordan added.

The Treasury Department said on Friday that it was concerned that some of America’s trading partners were taking actions to weaken their currencies and gain unfair trade advantages against the United States — but declined to label any country a currency manipulator, the New York Times reported. In its semiannual foreign exchange report, the department singled out Switzerland, which in 2020 was deemed a manipulator, as a worst offender and said it was closely watching the foreign exchange practices of Taiwan and Vietnam.