Word: switzerland
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Rationing Coupons. Added shipping costs and dwindling petroleum supplies have already forced gasoline-price increases in Sweden, The Netherlands. West Germany, Belgium and Switzerland. Escaping price increases for the time being are France, which is getting oil from Algeria, and Italy, whose storage tanks still have a two-month supply of crude oil. Much the hardest hit is Britain, which ordinarily gets two-thirds of its oil from Arab sources. The British have started printing gasoline-rationing coupons as "a precautionary measure," last week gave oil companies the go ahead to raise petroleum prices. Meanwhile, oil companies have been chartering...
...home freezers, newest Common Market consumer attraction. In 1950, Italy trailed every European nation except Spain and Portugal in appliance output; last year it was third in the world, after the U.S. and Japan. "Domestic appliances," notes the Milan newspaper, 24 Ore, "are to Italy what watches are to Switzerland...
Among the world's temples of high finance, none has risen to such eminence in such an unpretentious way as the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements. Its five-story, stone-faced headquarters, sandwiched between a tourist agency and a watch shop across from the railway station in Basel, still looks like the second-class hotel it once was. Travelers who often enter its musty lobby hoping to change their money find neither tellers nor vaults nor any cash at all. The B.I.S. keeps elsewhere its $1 billion gold hoard and $1.7 billion in other assets...
Dutch Uncle. B.I.S. directors -among them central-bank governors from Britain, West Germany, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden Switzerland-confer monthly at Basel with emissaries from nonmembers U.S., Canada and Japan. That inner ring forms what financiers have dubbed "the Basel Club": eleven men whose banks control three-quarters of the world's gold and currency reserves. Originally set up in 1930 to handle reparations payments from World War I, the B.I.S. gained stature chiefly after the mid-'50s as European currency controls ended. From the regular meetings in Basel sprang such innovations as currency swaps...
Recognizing that Bulova is necessarily an international-minded company-most of its watch movements are assembled in Switzerland-Henshel is particularly eager to expand its overseas markets. Though 80% of the company's sales are still in the U.S., some progress has been made: Bulova is now selling watches in 89 countries, compared with 19 in 1961. Even so, the U.S. remains its most promising market. During the current June graduation season, Bulova expects to capture as much as 30% of gift watch sales, which could soar to $100 million...