Switzerland Today
Dear Swiss Abroad,
Is Schlossbergplatz the new Paradeplatz?
I had to look up the name of Baden’s main square to make this joke, so the image of Zurich as Switzerland’s financial hub will likely remain for some time to come. But how long could it retain this status if more and more financial companies were to leave it?
And as the mornings feel frostier, the colder season is just around the corner – but this summer’s drought will also affect the winter and Switzerland’s preparedness for its energy needs.
Wishing you a sunny weekend.
A second bank is leaving Switzerland’s financial hub – is this a “wake-up call” for Zurich? After Vontobel’s departure from Zurich for Zug last month, Cembra’s announcement that it will move all its employees to Baden has sparked a debate about Zurich’s attractiveness as a business location.
Cembra says the planned move to Baden in canton Aargau is due to the changing world of work and the company’s “long-term location and space planning”. “Today’s premises were designed for different needs, and the design options are limited,” the bank’s head of communications Nicole Bänninger told the Tages-Anzeiger. The company examined various properties, including in Zurich – but Baden best met its needs. The new office offers “modern infrastructure, state-of-the-art building technology, and energy-efficient operation”, Bänninger said.
When Vontobel announced its move to Zug last month, the city of Zurich said it did not expect an exodus of financial companies. However, Christian Bretscher from the Zurich Banking Association views the two relocations as a “wake-up call”, emphasising that Zurich’s financial centre is already economically larger than the canton for which it is named. Nevertheless, the relocations should be an opportunity for the city and canton to “critically examine their location policies”, Bretscher told Tamedia newspapers.
Building restrictions in Zurich make it difficult to convert buildings for specific uses within a reasonable timeframe. It is also well known that Zurich is “highly unattractive” for companies from a tax perspective, Bretscher added.
Both Vontobel and Cembra declined to comment on whether tax considerations played a role in their decisions to move. However, Zurich’s corporate tax revenue has risen by more than 25% in the last five years. The effective corporate tax burden is 19.6% in Zurich, but only around 15% in Baden – a tax cut in canton Zurich was rejected by voters in May 2025.
According to reports in Tamedia newspapers, Cembra paid some CHF45 million ($54 million) in taxes in 2025, a considerable portion of which went to the city and canton of Zurich.
This year’s hot and dry summer affected many, and while falling autumn temperatures have brought some hope of relief, the winter ahead is also set to feel the effects of the recent weather situation.
Due to the heat and drought, Swiss water reservoirs are currently 73% full, below the average for previous years of 84%. “We’ll hardly be able to make up for that,” said Lino Guzzella, the former president of the federal technology institute ETH Zurich, during a lecture at the Institute for Swiss Economic Policy at the University of Lucerne (IWP).
“The lower water level means that we have about 900 gigawatt-hours less energy available from the reservoirs. That’s about 2-3% of Switzerland’s total electricity consumption during the winter months,” Guzzella said, according to a report by the Blick newspaper. And if nuclear power were phased out, electricity supply would be short 19 terawatt-hours in winter, he warned.
An alternative winter option is to import electricity from European neighbours. This is common practice for Switzerland – and makes economic sense. But Europe is also in a precarious situation. According to industry association Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), Europe’s gas storage facilities are currently around 69% full – around 16 percentage points below the five-year average. “Gas-fired power plants play an important role in Europe’s electricity supply during winter,” ETH Zurich energy expert Christian Schaffner told Blick.
Due to the conflict between the US and Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, less liquefied natural gas is reaching the market. Since the start of the crisis, the price of gas has almost tripled: from €30 to over €80 (CHF28 to CHF76) per megawatt-hour.
The starting point for winter is “more challenging than in previous years”, said Daniela Decurtins of the Association of the Swiss Gas Industry – even if, as she added, “there is currently no shortage”.
The Swiss government wants to boost cybersecurity by bringing several existing legislative projects together under one new federal law, according to a press release published today.
The proposed Federal Act on Cybersecurity would combine three projects covering products with digital elements, the protection of particularly important digital data, and the role of hosting and cloud providers in cybersecurity. The new law would also incorporate the existing obligation to report cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.
The rules governing the cyber resilience of products would be modelled on the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), while the government says bringing the different areas together under one law should reduce the administrative burden on companies. It would also help keep Swiss rules aligned with EU requirements. The details, including exactly which organisations would be subject to which obligations, have yet to be worked out. The Federal Council has tasked the defence ministry with preparing a draft for public consultation by June 2027.
To mark the 80th anniversary of its founding, Swiss Solidarity has published its Solidarity Barometer for the third time. According to the survey, 95% of the population consider acts of solidarity important for living together in society – a view shared across generations and demographic groups.
But putting solidarity into practice is not always so straightforward, said Miren Bengoa, director of Swiss Solidarity to Swiss public broadcaster SRF. “The environment has become more challenging. There are more crises which are happening simultaneously, more competition for attention, and also more economic uncertainty.”
The survey also reveals a gap between the importance people place on solidarity and how they view society as a whole: only 68% consider Swiss society to be characterised by solidarity.
The many crises competing for attention are also making donors more selective about where they direct their support. Some 76% of those surveyed felt it was important to check whether someone really deserved support, while 42% wanted to limit aid to people who had fallen on hard times through no fault of their own.
“[Donors] think more carefully about which crisis or organisation they want to support, and they want to know more precisely what impact their donation will have,” said Bengoa to SRF. Swiss Solidarity therefore says it intends to communicate the impact of donations even more directly in the future.
The organisation began on September 26, 1946, with a broadcast by Radio Sottens, the predecessor of Swiss public broadcaster RTS. Over the years, Swiss Solidarity has developed into a successful national charity: 275 fundraising campaigns have raised a total of CHF2.2 billion ($2.65 billion), Swiss Solidarity said today.
In total, the organisation has backed aid projects in 124 countries, including in Switzerland. Donations totalling CHF227.7 million following the 2004 tsunami in South-East Asia represent the highest amount ever raised.
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