📜 Notarized by Legend Only
The Swiss founding story: less fact, more creative paperwork.
In 1890, Switzerland had a problem. The Socialists had just run their first May Day, and the Federal Council, Switzerland’s seven-member executive, entirely Radical and allergic to standing next to a workers’ banner it hadn’t written, wanted a rival holiday. Not eventually. Now. So someone went shopping for a centennial. The Rütli oath (1307)? Wrong decade. The Sempach covenant (1480), the Stans pact (1481), the 1848 federal state (the winners’ holiday from a civil war 43 years earlier)? None hit the calendar right. Then someone remembered Bern was turning 700 in 1891, and that a mildewed parchment in the archives of Schwyz, the canton that gave the country its name, dated to « the beginning of August » of some year in the 1290s, could be squeezed into exactly 600. Close enough. Ship it. Nine years, start to finish.
The parchment is in Latin, at a time when Swiss charters were written in German. That alone should raise an eyebrow. It renews an earlier agreement nobody has ever found, and it surfaced, forgotten, in a Schwyz archive in the mid-eighteenth century. Carbon dating places it between 1270 and 1310; one Zurich medievalist narrows that to 1309, 18 years after the date on the document itself. Three valleys, a week’s ride apart on horseback, coordinating a secret oath in a hidden meadow, days after the emperor died 500 kilometres away in Speyer? Sure. It claims three seals. It has none. This is not a document you would want to notarise.
None of which stopped anyone. The parchment, unrelated to any actual oath, got stapled to the Rütli oath legend, moved back 14 years to fit. Add William Tell, a crossbowman with no documented tie to either story, and by 1891 you have a founding myth solid enough to build a parliament around: Tell and Stauffacher’s wife statued into the National Council chamber, the Rütli meadow frescoed above the lawmakers’ heads. France took 91 years after 1789 to settle on a national day at all, and only got there once its National Assembly named the head of state « president of the Republic » by a single vote, the same margin by which it had voted to execute the king. Switzerland skipped the civil war.
The people who built the Federal Palace weren’t even fooled. Above all that gilded mythology, they carved a frieze called, literally, the Relief of the Legend: a woman telling children the story of William Tell. It sits directly over the parliament floor. Every Swiss lawmaker who has voted there has done so under a ceiling that labels the country’s founding myth a bedtime story. Nobody has taken it down. Nobody has rewritten the textbooks. The confederation just keeps running on the story, dating problems and all, filed under: works fine, leave it alone. Nine years, start to finish. France needed 91.
M. Hantale 🧀
- 🇨🇠Economy. The KOF GDP growth barometer gains 1.4 points to 103.5 in July, driven by financial services, construction and industry, confirming a recovery following the March decline.
- 🇨🇠Climate. Switzerland turns red for drought with very high wildfire risks, particularly in Geneva and the Alps, with only a few Grisons valleys remaining less affected. A change expected around mid-August.
- 🇺🇸 Conflict. Trump announces resumption of talks with Iran on Monday after cancelling a « major attack » on Saturday at the request of allies, thereby suspending an escalation that threatened to reopen maritime routes.
- 🇪🇺 Policy. From 2 August, the EU requires designers and professional users to indicate « generated by AI » on AI-generated content, via visible notices for interactive agents and consultable metadata for images and summaries.
- 🇨🇠Politics. FIFA abandons its project to open up to private investors following an outcry and boycott threats, notably from UEFA, and suspends the « FIFA Forward Enterprise » programme.
Economy & Finance
- 🇪🇺 Inflation. Eurozone HICP inflation accelerates to 2.9% in July from 2.8% in June, driven by energy (+10%) and services (3.3%), which strengthens the likelihood of another interest rate rise by the ECB after the summer.
- 🇺🇸 Growth. GDP slowed to 1.5% in Q2, below expectations, though supported by robust consumption despite the fall in inventories and federal spending.
- 🇨🇳 Growth. The official manufacturing PMI fell to 49.2 in July from 50.3 in June, marking a contraction for the first time since February and a drop in new orders to 48.5.
- 🇩🇪 Employment. BMW announces the elimination of 8K jobs by 2027, Porsche plans 5K additional cuts and Volkswagen confirms a global plan for 50K departures, a sign of a haemorrhage of jobs in the European automotive industry.
- 🇺🇸 Employment. Jobless claims in the United States rebounded to 197K in the week to 25 July, up 9K from 188K in the previous week and slightly below the 200K expected.
- 🇺🇸 Rates. The Fed holds its benchmark rate between 3.50% and 3.75% for the fifth consecutive meeting, opting for caution despite PCE inflation at 4.1% and three dissenting votes in favour of a rate hike.
- 🇵🇹 Taxation. Portugal is introducing a temporary solidarity contribution on excess profits of oil extraction and refining companies realised in 2026, intended to support families and sectors affected by the rise in fuel prices.
- 🇸🇦 Commodities. Seven OPEC+ countries (including Saudi Arabia and Russia) add 188k barrels/day in September, marking the sixth consecutive increase and the end of gradual market restocking.
- 🇨🇠Currencies. The SNB posted a profit of 25.2bn CHF in the first half, driven by 31.7bn CHF in gains on its foreign currency positions but reduced by a loss of 6.4bn CHF on gold.
- 🇮🇹 Failures. At the ECB’s request, the Banca d’Italia is imposing a cyber stress test: by 31 December, banks, payment institutions, crypto-services and asset managers must submit an assessment of AI vulnerabilities, an inventory of assets and an investment plan to strengthen operational resilience.
Switzerland
- 🇨🇠Defence. The Armed Forces are extending their mission in Corsica by 4 days with 3 Super Puma helicopters to support relief efforts against forest fires, with repatriation scheduled for Friday.
- 🇨🇠Employment. Despite the heatwave, only 27% of Swiss men wear shorts to work and 60% prefer long trousers, signs of a very conservative dress code.
- 🇨🇠Demography. Berne’s population gained 257 inhabitants in the first half of 2026, reaching 147,124, thanks to a positive migration balance of 179 and a natural increase of 78 despite only 649 births, the lowest level since 2006.
- 🇨🇠Solidarity. Vaud is releasing a budget of 1.5 million Swiss francs in 2026, set to increase until 2028, to provide up to 3,000 Swiss francs per senior in order to delay entry into care homes by adapting housing.
- 🇨🇠Real estate. First signs of recovery are appearing: +11% in permits for rental properties over one year and 52k permits issued, but market tensions and housing shortages persist.
- 🇨🇠Real estate. 92,400 residents of French-speaking Switzerland are actively seeking accommodation in France, motivated by rental costs and property prices deemed too high.
- 🇨🇠Energy. The two Beznau reactors have been reconnected to the grid at reduced power following their shutdown on 26 June when the Aar reached 25°C, with the operator continuously monitoring water temperature.
- 🇨🇠Mobility. Passenger railway traffic reached a record in Q2 2026 with 6.3bn pass.-km, up 5.2% year-on-year and surpassing the previous peak of Q4 2025.
- 🇨🇠Mobility. Chinese manufacturer Yutong secures its first contract in Zurich: the city has approved the purchase of 20 electric buses for CHF 17m, with entry into service scheduled for mid-2027.
- 🇨🇠Trade. At 40 years old, the Big Mac index shows the Swiss franc overvalued by 45% against the dollar and places the Swiss Big Mac at $9.04, the highest price in the world.
- 🇨🇠Tourism. The heatwave is generating a surge in spontaneous bookings, particularly from Swiss visitors, towards the major destinations in Graubünden where mountain resorts and alpine lakes are recording strong summer demand.
Elsewhere in the World
- 🇧🇷 Elections. At 80 years old, Lula launches his campaign to secure a fourth term in the October ballot, presenting himself « in full form » and facing Flavio Bolsonaro under the shadow of Donald Trump’s influence.
- ðŸ‡ðŸ‡¹ Elections. A calendar sets the first round for 13/12 and a second round for 21/02/2027, but the holding of polls depends « on the establishment of an acceptable secure environment » and available funding.
- 🇮🇹 Government. Venice has collected more than €5M this season thanks to the day-visitor toll (approximately 650k payers at €10), the municipality is considering raising the tariff to €30–50€ on peak days.
- ðŸ‡ðŸ‡º Justice. Hungary officially becomes the 25th member state of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which will be able to investigate retroactively offences committed since 1 June 2021.
- 🇷🇺 Justice. Russia has issued an international arrest warrant against Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram, accusing him of facilitating « terrorist activities » via chats and chatbots allegedly used by the FSB to recruit Russians, with 46 people aged 12 to 22 having been arrested.
- 🇧🇴 Justice. The Bolivian public prosecutor’s office has issued an arrest warrant against former president Evo Morales, suspected of orchestrating the 50 days of blockades in May-June, as part of an investigation into « armed uprising » and « terrorism ».
- 🇲🇲 Justice. Myanmar’s Parliament adopted on 28 July 2026 a law against online scams providing for 10 years’ imprisonment to the death penalty for leaders of centres using forced labour.
- 🇹🇩 Justice. Chad announces its withdrawal from the Rome Statute of the ICC, a decision made « at the request » of the United States following a call on 23 July and justified by « political instrumentalisation » targeting mainly African countries.
- 🇺🇸 Diplomacy. The United States says it has sold more than $13bn of Venezuelan oil since the capture of Nicolás Maduro on 3 January, with revenues being used to keep the country running under American administration.
- 🇮🇹 Immigration. Italy temporarily suspends Schengen and introduces police checks for one month in hubs such as Rome, Milan and Bologna, targeting flights from Spain and exclusively non-EU travellers.
- 🇬🇷 Catastrophes. Winds gusting up to 100 km/h propelled a blaze that ravaged forests and homes 70 km from Athens, with 500 firefighters deployed whilst more than 12,000 ha went up in smoke.
- 🇨🇺 Energy. A new widespread power outage plunged Cuba, including Havana, into darkness on Sunday evening, with the state-owned company citing a « total disconnection » of the national grid.
- 🇨🇩 Health. The WHO describes the Ebola epidemic in the DRC as « the largest » ever recorded, with 3,605 cases and 1,587 deaths (fatality rate 44%), with transmission intensifying at an « exceptional » pace.
- 🇫🇷 Transport. An Airbus A350-1000ULR connected Melbourne to Toulouse in 24 hours 24 minutes and 23,076 km during a record test flight aimed at ultra-long-haul routes.
- 🇨🇠Pharma. BC Partners takes a joint-control stake in Swiss InfoRLife, valued at around $1.5bn, with the sale coming from founder Sergio Dusci and the founding families of ACS Dobfar, who retain a minority stake and will continue the cooperation.
- 🇧🇷 Pharma. Anvisa approves Owozy, a generic semaglutide marketed by Sandoz🇨🇠in Brazil, launch planned H2 2026 on a GLP-1 market estimated at $1.8bn and 16.5m diabetic patients.
- 🇨🇠Banking. UBS posts net profit up 17% to $2.8bn (2.3bn CHF) in the second quarter, with operating profitability before taxes surging 64% to $3.59bn.
- 🇨🇠Industry. Holcim raises its 2026 targets following a solid first half: current operating result at 1.43bn CHF and revenue at 7.92bn CHF, organic growth of 11.5% and 5.2%.
- 🇨🇠Luxury. Dutch-Swiss DSM-Firmenich reports sales up 5% to €4.66bn in H1 and confirms its 2026 targets, whilst announcing the elimination of 1,000 positions.
- 🇨🇠M&A. Infomaniak🇨🇦 announces its listing via a reverse merger with Perrot Duval Holding, with the shareholder meeting on 24 September to decide and Perrot Duval to be renamed « Infomaniak ».
- 🇨🇠Technology. The ETH Zurich spin-off ZuriQ raises $25.5M in seed funding to develop a quantum chip architecture that it presents as more scalable than existing approaches.
- 🇨🇠Technology. ZuriQ🇨🇦 raises $25.5M in seed funding to industrialise its natively 2D quantum chip and accelerate the deployment of hundreds of qubits on a single chip.
SMI Index
| Name | Price | Mkt Cap | 7d Chg | YTD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roche | 363.20 | 289.39B | â–¼ -0.5% | â–² +12.6% |
| Novartis | 126.40 | 241.54B | â–¼ -3.1% | â–² +20.0% |
| Nestlé | 80.87 | 207.78B | ▼ -1.9% | ▲ +10.1% |
| ABB | 80.30 | 145.36B | â–² +3.7% | â–² +33.1% |
| UBS | 42.78 | 140.03B | â–² +0.8% | â–² +15.8% |
| Zurich Insurance | 613.40 | 91.71B | â–¼ -1.4% | â–² +8.0% |
| Holcim | 72.74 | 39.88B | â–¼ -2.0% | â–¼ -4.7% |
| Swiss Re | 134.65 | 39.68B | â–¼ -1.0% | â–² +10.1% |
| Lonza | 566.40 | 39.56B | â–² +1.1% | â–² +6.9% |
| Swisscom | 621.50 | 32.17B | â–¼ -2.7% | â–² +11.5% |
| Givaudan | 3,233.00 | 29.86B | â–¼ -1.9% | â–² +7.0% |
| Sika | 185.05 | 29.68B | â–² +4.5% | â–² +16.3% |
| Alcon | 56.20 | 27.44B | â–¼ -0.5% | â–¼ -11.1% |
| Swiss Life | 952.20 | 26.65B | â–² +0.8% | â–² +6.6% |
| SGS | 96.36 | 19.05B | â–² +0.0% | â–² +7.6% |
| Geberit | 540.60 | 17.79B | â–² +1.5% | â–¼ -10.1% |
| Partners Group | 686.80 | 17.74B | â–¼ -1.0% | â–¼ -29.7% |
| Straumann | 102.25 | 16.21B | â–² +1.2% | â–² +9.6% |
| Julius Bär | 71.20 | 14.63B | ▲ +0.9% | ▲ +13.0% |
| Logitech | 84.12 | 12.01B | â–¼ -4.2% | â–² +5.8% |
📅 Data as of 2026-08-03 09:50
Forex CHF
| Pair | Rate | 7d Chg | YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| EUR/CHF | 0.93 | â–² +0.08% | â–² +0.16% |
| USD/CHF | 0.81 | â–¼ -1.33% | â–² +2.07% |
| GBP/CHF | 1.09 | â–¼ -0.03% | â–² +2.01% |
📅 Data as of 2026-08-03 09:50
Protecting an Industry That Does Not Exist
America now taxes Swiss watches at 12.5%, which raises a question nobody in Washington appears to have asked: protecting whom? The domestic watch industry this shields employs, at industrial scale, nobody. The few American workshops that do exist buy their movements, springs and cases abroad, mostly from the country being taxed. Watchmaking has a word for a function that adds cost to a movement without telling the wearer anything new: a complication. This tariff is one.
Tariffs come in two kinds. One kind shifts production home: painful, sometimes effective, at least coherent. The other kind shifts nothing but prices, because there is no domestic producer to shift towards. The first is industrial policy. The second is a sales tax collected at the border and blamed on foreigners. The watch tariff turns on which kind it is.
Washington has already answered, elsewhere. Scotch whisky is exempt. Coffee is exempt. The test was the two-kinds test: if America cannot grow it or make it, the duty protects no one and taxes everyone. Nestlé now ships Swiss-made coffee capsules into the US duty-free, a detail Bern’s federal government presumably savours. Watches clear the bar with room to spare. Hamilton, once the pride of American watchmaking, decamped to Switzerland decades ago and never looked back.
The US absorbs 17% of Swiss watch exports, roughly CHF4.3B of CHF25.6B. Duties whipsawed from zero to 39% in 2025, were struck down by the Supreme Court in February, refunded, then reinstated at 12.5% in late July. November shipments to America collapsed 52.3%. Not because demand vanished. Because no importer builds inventory into a legal void. The refunds softened the 2025 invoice. They did not refund a year of frozen order books. And the duty stacks onto a product already repricing itself, record gold and a record franc doing their part, in the one major watch market still growing.
No retaliation, no press conferences. Breitling expanded its American investments straight through the tariff year. The trade federation lobbies methodically, one exemption request at a time. Bern pursues the same exemption and confirms nothing. The stated ambition is almost comically modest: two years of calm to plan. In a mechanical watch, that role belongs to the escapement, releasing force in small controlled increments so the movement keeps time instead of tearing itself apart.
The EU threatened countermeasures and signed a deal it now dislikes. Switzerland absorbed the shock, let its manufacturers collect their refunds, kept shipping, and now argues arithmetic with an administration that exempted whisky on identical logic. Force released all at once breaks the mechanism. Loud countries fight tariffs. The escapement keeps time.