Swiss Post chair wants to grow revenues abroad

The chairman of Swiss Post wants the government-owned entity to diversify and seek out foreign sources of revenue. It also plans more job cuts.

“The Swiss Post must be like Nestlé,” Claude Béglé told the Sonntag newspaper, referring to the Vevey-based food giant, which does most of its business outside Switzerland’s borders.

“It will in the future have a large headquarters in Switzerland, will develop products here, will pay taxes on its profits but to a large extent will do business outside the country,” Béglé said.

Béglé said the Post expected to expand in certain businesses but would be managing a decline in others. The company is seeking to grow Swiss Post Solutions, a division that handles mail and document outsourcing for companies.

It also plans to expand the services of PostFinance, its banking arm, to take advantage of what it believes is growth potential in corporate loans and mortgages.

However, the company expects its core business, traditional mail, to decline by one-third by 2015.

From January to September, Swiss Post reduced 1,200 full-time positions, affecting around 1,700 people. Béglé said further job cuts could be expected.

On December 15, the group announced it had fired Michel Kunz, its director-general, over differences in business strategy.

Employing around 33,000 people, the Post is the country’s second-largest employer. It generated a profit of SFr825 million ($790 million) on revenues of nearly SFr9 billion in 2008.

swissinfo.ch and agencies