Word: swiss
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...that news does not please the fiscally conservative and risk-averse Swiss. A $60 billion government rescue package for banks wasn't too welcome, either. Nor was UBS's announcement that it will pay out an estimated $1.77 billion in bonuses this year. As Zurich's daily newspaper, Tages-Anzeiger, observed, "Mr. and Mrs. Swiss will never understand that...
...Vontobel bank, estimates that $15-20 billion in domestic funds were moved from UBS to smaller banks in recent months. In normal times, one bank expert says, withdrawals would be next to nothing. "We are fed up because UBS has betrayed all the values that make us uniquely Swiss: fiscal responsibility, stability and international credibility," says Samuel Bretholz, a Geneva sociology student who is writing a thesis about the banks' impact on society. "No wonder our perception of ourselves as decent people has taken a beating...
...billion loss in 2008 and slashed thousands of jobs. But so far it has not suffered from the loss of client confidence that UBS faces. The biggest winners are small banks because "they keep their noses clean and stay out of the United States," Bretholz says. "The Swiss want their money to be safe, and they can no longer find security in big banks that operate internationally and are exposed to global risks...
Prompted by the tax evasion scandal, the Swiss are now in the middle of a national re-examination of banking industry regulations. An increasing number of voices are speaking up against banking secrecy, which, under the current law, can only be lifted if a client is suspected of defrauding tax authorities, rather than merely not declaring all assets. Recent polls show that 56% of Swiss now support helping foreign countries identify tax evaders, up from just 20% last year. Even some ministers and bankers agree that changes to the 75-year-old law might be necessary to avoid continued pressure...
...tarnish the citizens' image of their country or diminish the confidence in the banking sector remains to be seen. "Right now, everybody is upset because UBS messed up," says Georg Lutz, a political scientist at Lausanne's Foundation for Research in Social Sciences. But Lutz points out that the Swiss had rebounded from scandals and corporate downfalls before, such as the controversy in the 1990s surrounding the dormant Holocaust bank accounts, or the collapse, in 2001, of Switzerland's former national airline. "At that time we were upset too, but we got over it and moved on," Lutz says...