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Thousands of Swiss bank jobs in peril: report

Lyssandra Sears
Lyssandra Sears - [email protected]
Thousands of Swiss bank jobs in peril: report
Rajesh Sundaram (File)

More than 15,000 jobs may have to be cut to compensate losses sustained by the Swiss private banking sector, Boston Consulting Group has predicted.

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The BCG has calculated that the Swiss banking industry needs to save some 3.9 billion francs ($4.01 billion) prior to 2014 in order to remain healthy, newspaper Tages Anzeiger reported.

This amount is the equivalent of 15,500 full-time positions, Matthias Naumann, head of BCG Switzerland, told the newspaper.

BCG believes that a approximately 14 percent of the assets currently held in Switzerland will be taken out of the country as a result of the implementation of the new tax treaties with the United Kingdom, Austria and Germany. Revenues are also estimated to shrink by as much as 46 percent.

Switzerland is credited with housing some 44 percent of the world’s offshore assets, which in total are estimated at around 2 trillion francs ($2.05 trillion). BCG estimates, following the introduction of these treaties, that the country will lose about 28 percent of its holdings and lose up to half of the income currently earned from Western European clients.

Although new income is being generated from the Asian and Latin American super-rich, these amounts are still nowhere near sufficient to compensate for the loss from the Western European clients.

The report also showed that profit margins in private banking were on the decline, reflecting the increasing difficulties faced by the banks in keeping their businesses profitable.

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