Switzerland

"In my traveling experience, there are two most distinctive places globally where craftsmen gather to manufacture high-end consumer goods. One is the Jura Valley in Switzerland, and the other is Moutai Town."

"Indutrade into the UK and the DACH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), where competition for deals was less fierce compared to Sweden. A"

"And it wasn’t just a transfer of knowledge from America to China. Apple had a specific team of Subject Matter Experts, whose job was to research new processes, new materials, new tools, and new machines. “If the current machines, the current technologies in Asia, were not enough for what we were looking for, the SME team would go to Europe or Japan to search for new technologies,” says a former manufacturing design engineer. “They’d try to find new technologies, new labs, new research facilities, whatever—and if they could find it, they’d try to transfer that to China and make in China what we couldn’t do with the current technology.” This person adds: “This happened every year when we had to launch a new product. Because every year we were pushing the envelope and we’d need something new… Apple identified a lot of technology, for example, in the watch industry and jewelry industry in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and they’d go to those places, find these special machines—these special technologies for very refined high-end products—and try to adapt those machines into making an iPhone or iPad or Mac.”"

"In 1977, he gave up – it was only in India that something resembling the Rausing plan had succeeded, but on a local level. Ruben decided to leave Rome and instead settle in Switzerland. However, the decision was easier to make than to implement in practice. The Swiss authorities considered him too old and would be a burden to the country if he were granted a residence permit. Ruben felt wronged by the Swiss opposition, as he believed they should understand how much money he had. After a tough fight, he managed to obtain his residence permit and moved to Lausanne where Tetra Pak’s and the family’s financial managers worked under the economist Lennart Ohlsson. Although Ruben still longed to return to Sweden, he found it easier to live in Lausanne than in Italy. In Lausanne, he could socialize with the Swedes stationed there and take an active part in managing the family fortune which had grown significantly after they started seriously selling the aseptic Briken. Money, both commissions from Cordotex and profits from the various Tetra companies, literally poured into the foundations."

"I, a native of Heidelberg, left Germany over three decades ago. Since then, I have been living in Switzerland and have since obtained Swiss citizenship. I appreciate this innovation-friendly country, which (despite cantonal differences) is overall less bureaucratized than Germany and has given me the opportunity to be entrepreneurial worldwide from the start. In a way, I didn't emigrate, but returned to the country from which I came from family-wise. But more on that later."

"Switzerland, which I have known since my youth, is among the countries whose mentalities and lifestyles have particularly appealed to me. The long past familial origin was unknown to me and certainly not decisive for my decision to make the country my private and entrepreneurial focal point in the early 1990s. But the origin and what is passed on in family life in terms of traditions and lifestyle, some of it perhaps unconsciously in my case, are more formative than we often suspect. Perhaps the hidden Swiss roots have shaped my life path more than I have perceived myself, and my holistic thinking in the larger dimensions, the "big picture thinking" as the Anglo-Saxons call it, has been decisive. I did not emigrate to Switzerland, but in a sense I returned home."

"If everything inside has remained unchanged, outside the Luxottica world has grown immensely. The house, a symbol of his definitive landing into the big bourgeoisie, is located right at the entrance of the mega-factory in Agordo, what in the company is called "the blue sea," from the color of the paint it was painted, a shade that over the years has become a sort of social color. Little marketing and a lot of substance even in that choice, explains to me the associate Luigi Francavilla, amused. "I liked blue because it was the color of the large factory where I worked in Switzerland before coming here." When the painter arrived, he had a can of paint in that shade. He swiped two brushstrokes. They watched him. Del Vecchio said, "It's fine." No soul searching or team meetings to choose the right shade to represent the values of the group. There was simply the need to paint the first shed."

"Nutella contributes to the unstoppable growth of Ferrero in Europe. Other factories and commercial offices open in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. There's an anecdote that alone could tell the success of the new product, without resorting to what we now call market research: the 'spalloni', smugglers who come from Switzerland to Italy loaded with American cigarettes and with some watches, on the return carry in their robust backpacks loads of Nutella and other Ferrero products. Especially in Switzerland, one of the historical homelands of chocolate."

"Even then, Michael Lemner was not completely unprepared—a few years earlier, he had been moved to Switzerland with equally short notice. - I had never worked with store operations and never worked abroad. But they said it doesn't matter. They just dropped me in Geneva, he recounts.[80](private://read/01jas9tvg84jycb27616w1f9k8/#note-80) H&M calls the method "assisted self-learning." There are those who talk about how it should be done, but you have to learn everything yourself. - We used to say we drop them in the swimming pool and then see who can swim."

"When shipowners choose flags, the degree of protection against intrusive tax officials is a criterion. Then so-called bearer’s shares, or bearer stocks, are good to have. The person who holds the share certificates in hand owns the company. And when the papers are in a safe deposit box in Switzerland or perhaps Monaco, it is not so easy to find out who actually has the keys to the safe deposit box."

"Global Supply Chain Finance (GSCF), Switzerland A financial company that calls itself a family. It procures loans, assists with company formation, and advises executive managements. Its headquarters are located in Zug. In the race to lower taxes, this Swiss stronghold holds a record that is hardly surpassable - more than 27,000 incorporated companies are registered in Zug."

""René Benko effortlessly meets all the points of the dark triad," Thomas Knecht certifies in a remote diagnosis. He was a forensic psychiatrist at the Psychiatric Center in Herisau, Switzerland, until mid-2023 and was a much sought-after expert in numerous trials. In the luxury life, Knecht sees the narcissism, in Benko's talent for winning people over for his ideas, the Machiavellianism. In addition, there is a certain ruthlessness in dealing with other people, at least when they were business partners."

"Their former foundation board director, Werner Müller, former Federal Minister of Economics, wants to increase the foundation's capital to be able to bear the billion-dollar costs for water management regarding the mining shafts left behind. "So far, we have largely invested in government bonds. But since their interest rates are currently lower than inflation, there is a decrease in value," Müller said in an interview with Rheinische Post in 2013. In the future, they plan to invest up to 35 percent of their assets in the private economy. "For example, we are looking for medium-sized companies in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria that already have a strong position in the market.""

"Their former foundation board director, Werner Müller, former Federal Minister of Economics, wants to increase the foundation's capital to be able to bear the billion-dollar costs for water management regarding the mining shafts left behind. "So far, we have largely invested in government bonds. But since their interest rates are currently lower than inflation, there is a decrease in value," Müller said in an interview with Rheinische Post in 2013. In the future, they plan to invest up to 35 percent of their assets in the private economy. "For example, we are looking for medium-sized companies in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria that already have a strong position in the market.""

"The main strand of the claim that made up this issue was that an enormous sum invested by UK and Dutch savers would now have to be paid back by the Icelandic taxpayer. It was an incendiary idea, which, by virtue of being repeated, became an accepted truth. In fact, for the Icelandic taxpayer to have to foot the bill, Landsbanki’s assets would have had to have been worthless or to have fallen at least 50 per cent. Neither was ever the case. Landsbanki did not go bankrupt because it had lost its assets. It had simply not been able to change Icelandic krona for foreign currency. It was a liquidity crisis, rather than any fraud or malfeasance, that forced it to stop. Furthermore, no one had previously suggested that the Icelandic state was responsible for debts of a commercial enterprise, so it was extraordinary to do so now. The problem was some ambiguity over the responsibilities in such situations of EFTA countries (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) vis-à-vis EU member states."

"As the money flooded in and I made that *Forbes* front cover, doors kept opening for me and I gained access to a new stratum of people and power. The World Economic Forum in Davos is one example. People talk about it being a networking magnet for the kings of capitalism, but that’s only half the story. I always came back pumped up, energised and with a notebook full of ideas and potential deals. The annual Davos meeting inspires people to make a change; it challenges you on a personal level to have a higher purpose, and gives you a deeper recognition of the challenges of the world. In one way it is like being back at school, and the closeting effect of so much wealth and power being concentrated in one small Swiss village is electrifying."