T.Žuko blogas

Pierre Mirabaud: In Defense of Swiss Banking / from Project Syndicate

GENEVA – Leaders of the G-20 have now declared that “the era of banking secrecy is over,” and have threatened to take action against “non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens.” No one should include Switzerland among these, for the Swiss government has already offered to improve international cooperation by adopting the OECD’s standard on international administrative assistance on tax issues. …>>

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Series: The tax gap / Response
The Guardian, Thursday 12 February 2009

Switzerland is not a haven for tax evaders
We believe in privacy, and our approach encourages a high degree of taxpayer honesty, says Urs Roth …>>

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swissinfo May 8, 2009 – 10:18 AM     Judge says Swiss deserve response in UBS case

A United States judge says the country’s attorney general must respond to Switzerland’s complaints over a legal case between UBS and the Internal Revenue Service. …>>

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swissbanking.org: Stellungnahme der SBVg zur öffentlichen Anhörung in Berlin vom 25. März 2009 / PDF Stellungnahme (25.03.2009)

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swissbanking.org: Meinungsumfrage 2009 – hohe Zustimmung für die Wahrung der Privatsphäre und das Bankkundengeheimnis – Vertrauen in die Hauptbank nach wie vor hoch …>>

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swissinfo: OECD seeks to heal tax rift with Switzerland
 
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has welcomed “constructive and transparent dialogue” between the Paris-based body and Switzerland.

swissinfo.ch has obtained an exclusive copy of a letter sent on Thursday by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría to Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz. The text gives a detailed reply to Swiss concerns and in a tone contrasting with the earlier war of words. …»

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swissinfo: OECD stimmt gegenüber der Schweiz mildere Töne an
 
OECD Genereralsekretä Gurría begrüsst die Bereitschaft der Schweiz, bis Ende 2009 mit mindestens 12 Ländern neue Steuer-Abkommen auszuhandeln. Auch an einem Treffen der grossen Parteien mit der Regierung stand der Druck auf den Finanzplatz im Mittelpunkt.

Die Organisation für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD) hat am Donnerstag ein neues Kapitel aufgeschlagen im Steuerdialog mit der Schweiz…. »

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swissinfo 8. Mai 2009 – 18:28     Parteien stehen hinter starkem Finanzplatz

Die Regierung kann bei seiner Strategie zur Stärkung des Finanzplatzes Schweiz grundsätzlich auf Unterstützung der fünf Bundesratsparteien zählen. Dies ergaben die traditionellen Von-Wattenwyl-Gespräche in Bern. …>>

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swissinfo May 8, 2009 – 12:00 PM     Swiss National Bank vaults back into black

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) reported a profit of SFr4.83 billion ($4.28 billion) for the first quarter of 2009, boosted by exchange rate gains and gold prices. …>>

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04/11/2009 SPIEGEL
THE WORLD’S SHORTEST BLACKLIST

Why the Fight against Tax Havens Is a Sham
By Alexander Neubacher

There were many fine words about the fight against tax havens at the G-20 summit. But the reality looks very different: The OECD’s new tax haven blacklist contains exactly zero entries. …>> 

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swissinfo: Finanzminister Peer Steinbrück gerät wegen seiner heftigen Attacken auf die Steuerpolitik der Schweiz, Liechtensteins und Luxemburgs immer stärker in die Kritik. Selbst Aussenminister und SPD-Kanzlerkandidat Frank-Walter Steinmeier ging am Donnerstag auf Distanz und mahnte zur Mässigung. “Wir tun alle gut daran, die Debatte nicht weiter anzuheizen, sondern auf den Kern der Sache zurückzuführen”, sagte Steinmeier. Er wies vor Journalisten in Berlin den neuesten Afrika-Vergleich Steinbrücks zurück. …>>

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swissinfo: Luxemburg will die Brüsseler Pläne durchkreuzen

Die EU-Kommission fordert einen Vertrag mit der Schweiz zur Amtshilfe bei Steuerhinterziehung. Doch gegen diesen Plan meldete der EU-Staat Luxemburg gestern beim EU-Finanzministerrat in Brüssel Widerstand an. Einmal mehr dürften Worte des deutschen Finanzministers Peer Steinbrück in der Schweiz hohe Wellen werfen – dabei hatte er sich gestern in Brüssel für einmal… »

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swissinfo: USA-Schweiz: auch ein Konflikt zweier Rechtssysteme

Die Schweizer Regierung will das neue Doppelbesteuerungs-Abkommen mit den USA mit einem Gegengeschäft zugunsten der UBS verknüpfen. US-Medien und Anwälte reagieren ablehnend. Der Bundesrat müsse für die
UBS kämpfen, sagen Schweizer Parlamentarier. …>>

A conversation with French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde

in Current Affairs, Business / on Monday, April 27, 2009

A conversation with Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser and Carlos Pascual, Brookings vice president and director of Foreign Policy at Brookings

in Current Affairs / on Thursday, April 23, 2009

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NZZ Online
Kampf gegen die Rezession (video)

Doris Leuthard, Bundesrätin
NZZ Standpunkte: Sendung vom 5. April 2009
Die Wirtschaftsministerin Doris Leuthard im Gespräch mit Markus Spillmann und Marco Färber

II.

NZZ Online
Bankgeheimnis: der Anfang vom Ende? (video)

Urs P. Roth, Schweizerische Bankiervereinigung
NZZ Standpunkte: Sendung vom 8. März 2009
Urs P. Roth zu Gast bei Markus Spillmann und Marco Färber

III.

NZZ Online
Krisenfeste Schweiz? (video)

Hans-Rudolf Merz, Bundespräsident
NZZ Standpunkte: Sendung vom 11. Januar 2009
Bundesrat Hans-Rudolf Merz zu Gast bei Markus Spillman und Marco Färber

Wegelin & Co. Investment Commentary / Issue 262   -   March 16, 2009 (skaitantiems vokiškai patarčiau skaityt/klausyt šia kalba, nes, spėju, K.Hummleris ja juos rašo irginale).

swissinfo April 12, 2009 – 3:04 PM    Couchepin blasts G20
Interior Minister Pascal Couchepin has slammed the G20, the world’s 20 leading economies and compared the OECD to a restaurant guide. …>>

12. April 2009, NZZ am Sonntag

Schweiz prüft Sanktionen gegen OECD
Konflikt mit Generalsekretär Gurría spitzt sich zu

Der Bund klärt ab, wie weit er den Konflikt mit der OECD eskalieren lassen soll. Bürgerliche Parlamentarier fordern, der Bundesrat solle OECD-Chef Gurría mit der Abwahl drohen. Markus Häfliger …>>

swissinfo April 9, 2009 – 10:10 PM OECD explains to Swiss its position on tax
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has once more defended its position on fiscal matters, after accusations of unfairness. …>>

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London Summit – Leaders’ Statement: The Global Plan for Recovery and Reform 2 April 2009 (Final communique) pp 3-4

Strengthening financial supervision and regulation

13. Major failures in the financial sector and in financial regulation and supervision were fundamental causes of the crisis. Confidence will not be restored until we rebuild trust in our financial system. We will take action to build a stronger, more globally consistent, supervisory and regulatory framework for the future financial sector, which will support sustainable global growth and serve the needs of business and citizens.
14. We each agree to ensure our domestic regulatory systems are strong. But we also agree to establish the much greater consistency and systematic cooperation between countries, and the framework of internationally agreed high standards, that a global financial system requires. Strengthened regulation and supervision must promote propriety, integrity and transparency; guard against risk across the financial system; dampen rather than amplify the financial and economic cycle; reduce reliance on inappropriately risky sources of financing; and discourage excessive risk-taking. Regulators and supervisors must protect consumers and investors, support market discipline, avoid adverse impacts on other countries, reduce the scope for regulatory arbitrage, support competition and dynamism, and keep pace with innovation in the marketplace.
15. To this end we are implementing the Action Plan agreed at our last meeting, as set out in the attached progress report. We have today also issued a Declaration, Strengthening the Financial System. In particular we agree:

- to establish a new Financial Stability Board (FSB) with a strengthened mandate, as a successor to the Financial Stability Forum (FSF), including all G20 countries, FSF members, Spain, and the European Commission;
- that the FSB should collaborate with the IMF to provide early warning of macroeconomic and financial risks and the actions needed to address them;
- to reshape our regulatory systems so that our authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks;
- to extend regulation and oversight to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets. This will include, for the first time, systemically important hedge funds;
- to endorse and implement the FSF’s tough new principles on pay and compensation and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of all firms;
- to take action, once recovery is assured, to improve the quality, quantity, and international consistency of capital in the banking system. In future, regulation must prevent excessive leverage and require buffers of resources to be built up in good times;
- to take action against non-cooperative jurisdictions, including tax havens. We stand ready to deploy sanctions to protect our public finances and financial systems. The era of banking secrecy is over. We note that the OECD has today published a list of countries assessed by the Global Forum against the international standard for exchange of tax information;
- to call on the accounting standard setters to work urgently with supervisors and regulators to improve standards on valuation and provisioning and achieve a single set of high-quality global accounting standards; and
- to extend regulatory oversight and registration to Credit Rating Agencies to ensure they meet the international code of good practice, particularly to prevent unacceptable conflicts of interest.

16. We instruct our Finance Ministers to complete the implementation of these decisions in line with the timetable set out in the Action Plan. We have asked the FSB and the IMF to monitor progress, working with the Financial Action Taskforce and other relevant bodies, and to provide a report to the next meeting of our Finance Ministers in Scotland in November.

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DECLARATION ON STRENGTHENING THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM – LONDON, 2 APRIL 2009 (Final communique Annex) pp 2-3

Prudential regulation

We have agreed to strengthen international frameworks for prudential regulation:

- until recovery is assured the international standard for the minimum level of capital should remained unchanged;
- where appropriate, capital buffers above the required minima should be allowed to decline to facilitate lending in deteriorating economic conditions;
- once recovery is assured, prudential regulatory standards should be strengthened. Buffers above regulatory minima should be increased and the quality of capital should be enhanced. Guidelines for harmonisation of the definition of capital should be produced by end 2009. The BCBS should review minimum levels of capital and develop recommendations in 2010;
- the FSB, BCBS, and CGFS, working with accounting standard setters, should take forward, with a deadline of end 2009, implementation of the recommendations published today to mitigate procyclicality, including a requirement for banks to build buffers of resources in good times that they can draw down when conditions deteriorate;
- risk-based capital requirements should be supplemented with a simple, transparent, non-risk based measure which is internationally comparable, properly takes into account off-balance sheet exposures, and can help contain the build-up of leverage in the banking system;
- the BCBS and authorities should take forward work on improving incentives for risk management of securitisation, including considering due diligence and quantitative retention requirements, by 2010;
- all G20 countries should progressively adopt the Basel II capital framework; and
- the BCBS and national authorities should develop and agree by 2010 a global framework for promoting stronger liquidity buffers at financial institutions, including cross-border institutions.

The scope of regulation

We have agreed that all systemically important financial institutions, markets, and instruments should be subject to an appropriate degree of regulation and oversight. In particular:

- we will amend our regulatory systems to ensure authorities are able to identify and take account of macro-prudential risks across the financial system including in the case of regulated banks, shadow banks, and private pools of capital to limit the build up of systemic risk. We call on the FSB to work with the BIS and international standard setters to develop macro-prudential tools and provide a report by autumn 2009;
- large and complex financial institutions require particularly careful oversight given their systemic importance;
- we will ensure that our national regulators possess the powers for gathering relevant information on all material financial institutions, markets, and instruments in order to assess the potential for their failure or severe stress to contribute to systemic risk. This will be done in close coordination at international level in order to achieve as much consistency as possible across jurisdictions;
- in order to prevent regulatory arbitrage, the IMF and the FSB will produce guidelines for national authorities to assess whether a financial institution, market, or an instrument is systemically important by the next meeting of our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors. These guidelines should focus on what institutions do rather than their legal form;
- hedge funds or their managers will be registered and will be required to disclose appropriate information on an ongoing basis to supervisors or regulators, including on their leverage, necessary for assessment of the systemic risks that they pose individually or collectively. Where appropriate, registration should be subject to a minimum size. They will be subject to oversight to ensure that they have adequate risk management. We ask the FSB to develop mechanisms for cooperation and information sharing between relevant authorities in order to ensure that effective oversight is maintained where a fund is located in a different jurisdiction from the manager. We will, cooperating through the FSB, develop measures that implement these principles by the end of 2009. We call on the FSB to report to the next meeting of our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors;
- supervisors should require that institutions which have hedge funds as their counterparties have effective risk management. This should include mechanisms to monitor the funds’ leverage and set limits for single counterparty exposures;
- we will promote the standardisation and resilience of credit derivatives markets, in particular through the establishment of central clearing counterparties subject to effective regulation and supervision. We call on the industry to develop an action plan on standardisation by autumn 2009; and
- we will each review and adapt the boundaries of the regulatory framework regularly to keep pace with developments in the financial system and promote good practices and consistent approaches at the international level.

«Europa wird zuletzt aus der Krise finden» (video)

Anastassios Frangulidis, Leiter Anlagestrategie ZKB, zu den Beschlüssen des G-20-Gipfels.
NZZ Impulse: Sendung vom 3. April 2009

Interview: Zoé Baches

swissinfo 3. April 2009 – 14:29 “Ein Systemwechsel wäre nötig gewesen”
 
Eine Krise mit systemischem Ausmass bekämpft man nicht mit konjunkturellen Instrumenten, kommentiert der Freiburger Wirtschafts-Professor Sergio Rossi die Beschlüsse des G-20-Gipfels in London.

Die G-20-Staaten hätten sich in London allzu zögerlich gezeigt. Angesichts der Herausforderung, die grösste Krise seit den 1930er-Jahren zu meistern, habe er… »

swissinfo 2. April 2009 – 21:54 Die neue G-20-Weltordnung und die Schweiz
 
Bleiben vom G-20 Gipfel mehr als nur grosse Worte? Hat die Schweiz mit ihrem Platz auf einer grauen OECD-Liste das grosse Los gezogen oder droht der Untergang des schweizerischen Bankensystems? Wirtschaftsexperte Rudolf Strahm gibt Antworten. … »

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