Sunday 3 March 2013



Swiss Referendum Backs Executive Pay Curbs

BBC: Swiss voters have overwhelmingly backed proposals to impose some of the world's strictest controls on executive pay, final referendum results show.

Nearly 68% of the voters supported plans to give shareholders a veto on compensation and ban big payouts for new and departing managers.

Business groups argued the proposals would damage Swiss competitiveness.

But analysts say ordinary Swiss are concerned about a growing economic divide in the country.

The vote came just days after the EU approved measures to cap bankers bonuses.

'Fat cat initiative'

The final results showed that all 26 Swiss cantons backed the proposals.

In all, 1.6 million voters said "Yes" against 762,000, who rejected the idea.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes, in Berne, says multibillion dollar losses by Swiss banking giant UBS, and thousands of redundancies at pharmaceutical company Novartis, have caused anger in Switzerland - because high salaries and bonuses for managers continued unchanged.

The new measures will give Switzerland some of the world's strictest corporate rules, our correspondent adds. » | Sunday, March 03, 2013