Word: swiss
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...financial matters, European governments discourage outsiders from entering their bond markets by imposing coupon taxes ranging up to 25% on alien bond purchases. American bonds, on the other hand, being tax-free and easily transferable, are snapped up in $10,000 and $20,000 lots by zip-lipped Swiss bankers representing unmentioned clients...
...issues, which pay less interest but often have the attraction of convertibility into shares of common stock. Recent Dutch and Finnish bond issues sold badly; the European Coal and Steel Community has postponed a $20 million issue in view of market uncertainty as has the Transalpine Pipeline Co.; the Swiss bond market has sagged 10% in recent months as investors have sold European holdings to buy American. Europeans are increasingly waspish about the disproportionate share of their limited market that U.S. bonds already hold...
...legend is durable enough to warrant it. One Air Force model, having crash-landed on an ice island off Alaska five years ago, still stands there, a monument on a 30-foot pedestal of ice (see cut). In 1946, a DC-3 flew into a Swiss Alp, inflicting minor injury on itself and passengers, who disembarked. Thereupon, the plane sank out of sight into a glacier's soft snow. The thrifty Swiss calculate that the glacier, moving ponderously down the mountain, will discharge its cold-frozen possession six centuries hence-presumably in flyable condition...
Betting on Quality. The company weighs its risks carefully, sticks to the motto of its founders: "Rather no business than bad business." Essentially, Swiss Re bets on the quality of the insurance company whose risks it accepts, pays claims on the nail, often within 48 hours. The company weekly pays out an average of $4,000,000 in claims, takes pride in the fact that no client has ever sued it for payment...
...Swiss Re owns subsidiaries in the U.S., Canada, South Africa and Australia, controls affiliates in Britain, France and West Germany and is actively seeking new business in developing countries. Its foreign staff, made up of local nationals, is duly imbued with Swiss industry and frugality. But nobody nowadays is encouraged to be quite as desperately conscientious as Swiss Re's first manager. After making a loss-producing mistake in judgment, he committed suicide...