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Hong Kong Overtakes Switzerland as Top Offshore Wealth Hub Offshore assets booked in the Asian financial city in 2025 rose  to $2.9 trillion, according to Boston Consulting Group. Christopher Hui, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, has said the government plans to extend tax concessions to more asset classes, noting a distinct rise in Middle Eastern attendees at the city’s recent wealth summits. Bloomberg 27 May 2026 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-27/hong-kong-overtakes-switzerland-as-top-offshore-wealth-hub Michael Bär great-grandson of Julius Baer’s founder grew up during the heyday of Swiss private banking “Section 311 is not used a lot but when it is, it is the kiss of death,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Financial Crime and Security at the Royal United Services Institute.  US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent in February said: “MBaer has funnelled over a hundred million dollars through the US financial system on behalf of i...

  A new photo has emerged showing the moment the ceiling of a Swiss bar caught fire as partygoers held sparklers attached to champagne bottles.  BBC  Branden i Schweiz startade under sällsynt olyckliga omständigheter – med alkohol, trängsel och pyroteknik. Man kan se på filmer och bilder hur en servitris håller flaskor med pyrotekniska bloss höjda mot taket, där något som liknar ventilationsrör fattar eld. – Det är märkligt i sig, eftersom såna rör brukar vara klädda med mineralull, som i princip är obrännbart, säger Lars Brodin som är svenska Brandskyddsföreningens expert på systematiskt brandskydd. https://www.dn.se/sverige/brandexperten-paniken-kommer-ofta-for-sent/ Nervtrådarna som är kopplade till omdöme och riskbedömning mognar sent i hjärnans utveckling, särskilt i den del av hjärnan som kallas prefrontala cortex. Denna region är ansvarig för komplexa funktioner som att fatta beslut, planera, tänka abstrakt och kontrollera impulser. Här är några viktiga punkter om ...

  Three years ago, the Swiss brand launched an official certified preowned program. The program is expected to do more than $500 million in sales in 2025 So far, most luxury brands are wary of getting involved in reselling. They worry that offering used goods will undercut the appeal of buying new. They also dislike the transparency on resale websites, particularly if their goods sell for deep discounts secondhand.  Consumers will pay 28% more on average for a preowned watch that has been certified genuine by Rolex than one that hasn’t Certain models of Rolexes are already more expensive to buy used than new.  Because demand far outstrips supply, there is a waiting list for the roughly 1.2 million new watches the company sells a year  For example, one specific model of a brand-new Rolex GMT-Master II known as the Pepsi, costs $12,150 including average sales tax in stores.  The watch costs $22,750 on resale websites, but the median price of one that has been cert...

  Sur fredag på börsen.  Stängde på minus för fjärde handelsdagen av fem under den gångna veckan.  https://www.di.se/live/sur-fredag-pa-borsen-sbb-s-rapportlyft-mattades-av/ För bara två veckor sedan såg marknaden en sänkning  som nästa steg från Riksbanken.  Nu tyder prissättningen tvärtom på att det blir en höjning.  Viktor Munkhammar DI 7 november 2025 https://www.di.se/analys/marknaden-hojning-nasta-for-riksbanken/ Rejäl upphämtning på Wall Street under sista timmarna Uppgångarna späddes på av förhoppningar om kring att den amerikanska nedstängningen snart ska vara till ända, detta trots att Republikanerna på fredagskvällen avvisade Demokraternas erbjudande för att bryta dödläget. https://www.di.se/live/rejal-upphamtning-pa-wall-street-under-sista-timmarna/ Buy the dip https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/buy-dip.html Some of the conservative Justices may be reluctant to defy Mr. Trump on his beloved tariffs, but Mr. Sauer’s answer makes clear this...

  One obvious tweety bird is the riskiest type of bank debt, known as perpetual additional tier one bonds.  These securities allow regulators to wipe out investors if a bank fails, but to compensate they offer the highest yields for lending to financial firms.  The European bank stock index is up more than 240% since the demise of Credit Suisse Group AG in March 2023, when $17 billion of its AT1 bonds were zeroed.  There's a lot more of a capital buffer before we approach anything like the euro crisis of more than a decade ago, which spawned these instruments.  Regulators have fought hard to persist with the AT1 regulated debt structure to absorb capital losses.  It may not be perfect but it's here to stay as switching to any alternatives would be too disruptive for debatable benefits. Marcus Ashworth Bloomberg October 8, 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-10-08/risky-bank-debt-is-rationally-exuberant Understanding Tier 1 Capital https://w...

In a report on bank resolution, Switzerland’s financial regulator Finma, said that the country’s sole globally significant lender had workable plans for restructuring and resolution, but to stabilize acute emergency situations more room for maneuver is needed. Major banks in Europe are legally required to have written instructions for how to ensure an orderly wind-down or prepare a sale when they’re in trouble. Those plans are intended to help prevent any crisis at an individual bank from expanding into a systemic one. Bloomberg September 25, 2025 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-25/finma-says-ubs-emergency-plan-can-t-be-deemed-executable Bank living wills ensure no bank’s failure can create systemic collapses https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2022/12/bank-living-wills-ensure-no-banks.html More info by Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/search/major-banks-in-europe-are-lega-0LAO68fRQnCmodLoIqIF2A#0

De senaste årens prisuppgång är exceptionell. Guldet kostar nu 3 650 dollar per uns (omkring 30 gram) efter en uppgång på cirka 40 procent bara i år.  Det finns flera skäl till rusningen. Kineserna investerar numera hellre i guld än fastigheter. Dollarn har försvagats. Och styrräntan i USA förväntas sjunka, vilket gör en icke-avkastande tillgång som guld relativt sett mer attraktiv.  Men det främsta skälet till rallyt är betydligt mer illavarslande och kan kopplas till det nya säkerhetspolitiska läget.  Som en direkt följd av invasionen av Ukraina frös väst 300 miljarder dollar av den ryska centralbankens valutareserv. Beslutet var riktigt – och kännbart för Ryssland.  Det skickade också en signal till andra auktoritära länder, inte minst Kina, om vad de har att vänta sig om de skulle göra sig skyldiga till liknande övergrepp. https://www.di.se/ledare/sjukdomsinsikt-kravs-nar-guldfebern-harjar/ European governments should refuse to return the roughly €250bn of Russia...

  The CEO Who Wants to Double the Size of His Bank to $1 Trillion Bill Demchak surprised his friends when he decamped from a high-profile job at JPMorgan Chase for a job at a smaller bank more than two decades ago.  Today, the PNC Financial Services Group CEO is determined to turn his bank into a trillion-dollar giant, reshaping the industry in the process. The 63-year-old has been proselytizing that smaller banks need to grow or become casualties to the growing dominance of behemoths like JPMorgan and Bank of America.  Pressure from investors, regulatory and technology costs and competition from private markets and cryptocurrency present a growing list of threats. Early in his career, Demchak spent about a decade and a half on Wall Street at JPMorgan, where he had been called the “prince of darkness” after he led the development of the credit-default swap market that later played a central role in the 2008-09 financial crisis. Wall Street Journal 10 September 2025 https:...

PBB, as it’s known, is heavily exposed to US commercial real estate and struggling to address a problem all too common among banks: Investors are worried that it might not have enough equity to absorb its potential losses.   Equity is the bedrock of the financial system, the capital that shareholders provide to make loans and to take the first hit if things go wrong. Without it, banks are insolvent. They lack the resources to pay depositors and other creditors. Yet PBB insists it’s still well capitalized — and by regulators’ preferred measures, it is. The bank reported a Common Equity Tier 1 Ratio of 15.7% as of Dec. 31, well above the regulatory minimum of 8.4%. How can a bank be so obviously in trouble while officially fine?  The answer is in the way regulators evaluate capital adequacy. Pretty much every failed bank in recent years had an excellent risk-weighted capital ratio right up to the end.  Silicon Valley Bank’s Common Equity Tier 1 ratio was 12% in Decembe...

 Schweiz vill till varje pris undvika att fler banker omkull och kommer i dagarna lägga fram lagförslag om reformerade bankregler som ska förhindra “ännu en bankhärdsmälta”, skriver Bloomberg och uppger att de påskyndade och efterlängtade reformerna berör de viktigaste beståndsdelarna i banktillsynen; det handlar om allt från kapital- och likviditetsregler till kontroller av styrning. Ansvar ska utkrävas av banktopparna Böter och höga chefer som ställs till svars för sina övertramp är två åtgärder som ska ingå i de utökade tillsynsbefogenheterna, som välkomnas av alla inblandade parter och som ska förändra den risktagningskultur som kännetecknar schweiziska banker. Ola Söderlund DPS 4 april 2024 https://www.dagensps.se/bors-finans/har-ar-schweiz-recept-mot-fler-bankkrascher/ Switzerland Is Reworking Its Rulebook  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-04/switzerland-is-revamping-its-financial-system-after-credit-suisse-collapse https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/search...

 UBS Saved Credit Suisse. Now for the Bad News:  “Faced with the failure of Credit Suisse, officials gave UBS what it wanted and created an even bigger bank with explicit state guarantees. This reinforces the perception that governments will always stand behind systemically important banks — an expectation that encourages even more irresponsible behavior.” Bloomberg 21 mars 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-21/ubs-saved-credit-suisse-now-for-the-bad-news SVB Took Risks. That Should Shock Nobody  “The panic over the demise of SVB Financial Group, parent company of California-based Silicon Valley Bank, appears to reflect a widespread misunderstanding about what such institutions do.” Bloomberg 10 mars 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-10/svb-collapse-silicon-valley-bank-failure-isn-t-regulators-fault  

 Chocolate, cuckoo clocks, and bank secrecy “The twin crises of 9/11 and Lehman Brothers changed things for good, with UBS bailed out and international pressure killing secrecy by a thousand cuts,” More than 50 Swiss banking brands disappeared between 2008 and 2017 Bloomberg 24 March 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-24/credit-suisse-ubs-switzerland-is-left-with-watches-and-chocolate-not-cash-lfmrh6u4 The day UBS, the biggest Swiss bank, was saved After the grounding in 2001 of Swissair, a national icon, Switzerland was in danger of losing another flagship company.  Swissinfo October 16, 2018 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/2008-crisis_the-day-ubs--the-biggest-swiss-bank--was-saved/44474630

The country’s business model as banker for the global elites has crashed and burned Saudi Arabia and Qatar were enraged by moves to wipe out Credit Suisse stockholders without a vote by the board, in violation of shareholder rights, and at the outer boundaries of legality. “They told the Swiss that all their other investments in Switzerland would be called into question if it happened,” said the regulator. The Swiss backed down. They expropriated $17bn (£13.8bn) from holders of Credit Suisse convertible AT1 bonds instead, risking contagion through Europe’s $270bn market for junior bank debt at a perilous moment. This is just as bad for Switzerland’s credibility. “Switzerland will never be the same again. The reputation of Swiss banking has now been damaged forever. Bankers in Singapore are going to be popping corks” said professor Arturo Bris from the Swiss business school IMD. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 24 March  2023 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/24/era-swis...

 Its economic model and national identity, cultivated over centuries, were built on safeguarding the world’s wealth. It wasn’t just about a bank. Switzerland itself needed rescuing. It was Thursday, barely 24 hours into an escalating banking crisis and Credit Suisse was hemorrhaging deposits. The 167-year-old national institution appeared days away from bankruptcy.  To keep it alive until the weekend, the central bank was about to quadruple a credit line of more than $50 billion. U.S. and U.K. regulators called their Swiss counterparts to make sure they didn’t let Credit Suisse bring down global markets. WSJ 22 March 2023 https://www.wsj.com/articles/ubs-credit-suisse-rescue-switzerland-banks-36abe8c4 How Swiss banking went from a Rolls-Royce to a toxic mess Telegraph 19 March 2023 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/19/how-swiss-banking-went-rolls-royce-toxic-mess/ Swiss regulators have committed shameless expropriation. So much for the safety of Zurich Ambrose Evans...

First, banking rests on confidence. For uninsured depositors, running at the first sign of trouble is a perfectly rational response.  Second, systemic importance isn’t solely a matter of size. Even a small bank can cause big problems if other banks look like it. Third, panic is difficult to stop once it starts. Fourth, a bank’s prospects depend on more than just the credit quality of its assets. Interest-rate risk, and the composition of assets and liabilities, also are important. Fifth, incentives matter. When bank executives’ compensation is tied to earnings and to the bank’s stock, they’ll be motivated to take more risk.  What to do? First, address the issue of uninsured depositors. Forget the notion that they can monitor banks and provide market discipline. In practice, they do so only in a binary way: not at all, or suddenly and completely.  Second, restore systemic-risk supervision of mid-sized banks. Third, head off panics by making central bank lender-of-last reso...

Liabilities to the public that are supposed to be perfectly liquid and redeemed at par (“money”) should be matched one-to-one with similar assets. This could be done by forcing intermediaries to hold reserves at the central bank or similarly liquid government liabilities. This is the famous “Chicago Plan”.  Martin Wolf FT 21 March 2023  The Answer To The Banking Problem: The Chicago Plan The banking system of the United States is in disarray right now and needs changing, but at the moment, its leaders seem to be confused as to where to go. Not only do the authorities need to be cognizant about the current financial crisis, but they need to be aware of how technology is changing the whole system. John M. Mason 21 March  2023 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4589122-the-answer-to-the-banking-problem-the-chicago-plan Chicago plan The Chicago plan was a monetary and banking reform program suggested in the wake of the Great Depression by a group of University of Chicago econom...

The total wipe-out of $17bn of Credit Suisse’s tier 1 bonds renders the convertible debt market in Europe almost uninvestable.  These junior bonds ought to trump equities in market hierarchy. Clearly they do not.  When push comes to shove, it is easier to fleece the sophisticated foreign funds that buy these instruments than to wipe out retail shareholders, in this case Swiss citizens with a political voice. You can date the moment that the small Greek crisis turned into the larger Italian and Spanish crisis, and therefore became an existential threat to Europe’s monetary union.  It was when Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy – walking on the beach at Deauville in October 2010 – opened the door to haircuts on sovereign debt. Investors hurried to the exits, sauve qui peut. What is shocking is that a large and historic global bank could disintegrate in days, even if the deeper rot lies in slow-motion deposit flight over many months. Credit Suisse had larger capital buffers t...

Government used emergency laws to block shareholder vote  - The manner in which the sale was rushed through has tarnished the country’s reputation as a place where the rule of law is guaranteed for investors.  Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter said the government-brokered deal it put together was necessary to prevent a complete implosion of Credit Suisse, which could have forced the government to take the politically unpopular step of bailing the bank out.  Bloomberg 21 March 2023 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-21/credit-suisse-shareholder-says-override-of-vote-unprecedented

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  Why the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was not a black swan Published: March 20, 2023 at 6:01 a.m. ET Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the term black swan in his 2007 book called “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.”  Black swans in the stock market are sudden, awful, unpredictable and extremely rare—such as a market crash.  They are not, as Taleb complained in an interview with the New Yorker several years ago, “any bad thing that surprises us. The reason the recent banking crisis is not a black swan event is that it wasn’t as unpredictable as many advisers are making it out to be. Why the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was not a black swan - MarketWatch It’s not quite Creditanstalt Englund: The Austrian Black Swan Claims Its First Foreign Casualty: German Duesselhyp Collapses, To Be Bailed Out (englundmacro.blogspot.com)