{In February 2008, Thomas Minder, a Swiss businessman whose family-owned company is best known for its old-fashioned herbal toothpaste, attacked his banker, UBS Chairman Marcel Ospel, as if he were a form of stubborn plaque. At a shareholders’ meeting in Basel, he stormed the podium as Ospel addressed the crowd.
Ospel’s bodyguards grappled with Minder and wrestled him away before he could land his symbolic blow — he was trying to hand the embattled head of Switzerland’s largest bank a bound copy of Swiss company law, which codifies corporate temperance.
“Gentlemen, you are responsible for the biggest write-downs in Swiss corporate history,” Minder had railed just a few minutes before, referring to UBS’s loss of $50 billion during the subprime meltdown that prompted it to seek a government bailout. “Put an end to the Americanization of UBS corporate philosophy!” } snip
{This is a stunning turn of events for the land of secret bank accounts and carefully calibrated neutrality.
Even though most Swiss enjoy a very high standard of living, Minder’s campaign has struck a chord in a proudly egalitarian country increasingly unhappy with a growing class of super-rich unafraid to flaunt their wealth.
Combine that with an undercurrent of xenophobia — many of the top-paid executives in Switzerland are foreigners — and you have a volatile mix. In another sign of discontent, parts of the country are also considering scrapping the tax breaks that have lured wealthy foreigners such as Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, pop stars Phil Collins and Tina Turner, and Switzerland’s richest man, Ingvar Kamprad, the Swedish founder of Ikea.
Tina Turner to Become Swiss Citizen
She’s an American icon, but Tina Turner is reportedly about to renounce her U.S. citizenship in order to become a Swiss citizen. The “Private Dancer” singer has lived in the Zurich suburb of Kuesnacht since the mid-1990s. The Zuerichsee-Zeitung newspaper said on its website that the local council announced its decision to grant the 73-year-old Turner citizenship in an official notice published in today’s edition, according to The Associated Press.
The decision still requires formal approval from state and federal authorities.
“There is severe inequality that one really senses, even if there is no abject poverty in Switzerland,” says economist Hans Kissling, former head of the Zurich statistics office, who has written a book warning that the growing influence of the super-rich carries the risk of turning Switzerland into a feudal state by undermining a tradition of direct democracy that dates back to the Middle Ages.} snip
http://www.firstpost.com/economy/how-the-swiss-are-turning-on-the-super-rich-599662.html
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