http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/df9ce572-1a36-11de-9f91-0000779fd2ac.html
Swiss banks ban top executive travel
By Richard Milne in Geneva
March 26 2009
Switzerland’s private banks have started to ban their top executives from travelling abroad, even to neighbouring France and Germany, because of fears they will be detained as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy.
The head of one leading private bank in Geneva said the growing determination of countries such as the US and Germany to tackle tax evasion and secrecy meant banks felt they had to take extra measures to protect employees.
“Some banks have taken this precaution,” he said. “If today I go to Germany to visit two banks I deal with...German customs can take me in and question me.”
The travel bans, which have not been brought in by all banks, have focused on those visiting the US, following the detention there last year of a senior private banker from UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, as part of a federal tax investigation.
The head of the private bank, which itself has no travel restrictions, said: “Today if you are a banker from Switzerland going to the US you have to fear you will be taken in for questioning. I am thinking twice about going to America.”
However, four people in the private banking industry in Geneva told the Financial Times of banks bringing in total travel bans for staff, even for adjoining European countries.
“Private bankers aren’t even travelling to France. The partners are not leaving Geneva at all,” said a senior industry figure close to several private banks. No bank contacted by the Financial Times wanted to discuss the matter publicly.
The restrictions come ahead of next week’s Group of 20 summit where a clampdown on tax havens is set to be discussed.
Under pressure from other countries, Switzerland, which is estimated to account for about a third of the world’s $11,000bn in clandestine personal wealth, agreed this month to ease its bank secrecy laws and accept international standards on tax transparency.
From their discreet offices on a luxury goods shopping street overlooking Lac Leman, private bankers in Geneva reacted this week with a mixture of intense anger, at what they see as an unjustified attack by big countries, and concern about the threat to their business model.
“It is not really about bank secrecy; it is about solving an internal problem [for the big countries] by finding an enemy outside to bash,” said one senior banker.
Showing posts with label Geneva. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Geneva. Show all posts
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Massive particle collider passes first key tests
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g5nGPtmoUVIJDgehVJ_snD6vDA6gD933SR900
Massive particle collider passes first key tests
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
9-10-8
GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.
Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing and competing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite.
Five hours later, scientists successfully fired a beam counterclockwise.
Physicists around the world now have much greater power to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to learn about their structure.
"Well done, everybody," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to cheers from the assembled scientists in the collider's control room at the Swiss-French border.
The organization, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages less than an hour earlier, with the first beam injection at 9:35 a.m. (0735 GMT).
Eventually two beams will be fired at the same time in opposite directions with the aim of recreating conditions a split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.
"My first thought was relief," said Evans, who has been working on the project since its inception in 1984. "This is a machine of enormous complexity. Things can go wrong at any time. But this morning has been a great start."
He didn't want to set a date, but said that he expected scientists would be able to conduct collisions for their experiments "within a few months."
The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.
Scientists hope to eventually send two beams of protons through two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space. The paths of these beams will cross, and a few protons will collide. The collider's two largest detectors — essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons — are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.
The supercooled magnets that guide the proton beam heated slightly in the morning's first test, leading to a pause to recool them before trying the opposite direction.
The start of the collider came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
"It's nonsense," said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN.
CERN was backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking , who declared the experiments to be absolutely safe.
Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel.
Nothing of the sort occurred Wednesday, though the accelerator is still probably a year away from full power.
The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country that contributed US$531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.
Some scientists have been waiting for 20 years to use the LHC.
The complexity of manufacturing it required groundbreaking advances in the use of supercooled, superconducting equipment. The 2001 start and 2005 completion dates were pushed back by two years each, and the cost of the construction was 25 percent higher than originally budgeted in 1996, Luciano Maiani, who was CERN director-general at the time, told The Associated Press.
Maiani and the other three living former directors-general attended the launch Wednesday.
Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons and that there were other forces and particles.
On the Net:
CERN: http://www.cern.ch
The U.S. at the LHC: http://www.uslhc.us/
Massive particle collider passes first key tests
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
9-10-8
GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring Wednesday in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. (0826 GMT) indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the 4 billion Swiss franc (US$3.8 billion) Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.
"There it is," project leader Lyn Evans said when the beam completed its lap.
Champagne corks popped in labs as far away as Chicago, where contributing and competing scientists watched the proceedings by satellite.
Five hours later, scientists successfully fired a beam counterclockwise.
Physicists around the world now have much greater power to smash the components of atoms together in attempts to learn about their structure.
"Well done, everybody," said Robert Aymar, director-general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to cheers from the assembled scientists in the collider's control room at the Swiss-French border.
The organization, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages less than an hour earlier, with the first beam injection at 9:35 a.m. (0735 GMT).
Eventually two beams will be fired at the same time in opposite directions with the aim of recreating conditions a split second after the big bang, which scientists theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.
"My first thought was relief," said Evans, who has been working on the project since its inception in 1984. "This is a machine of enormous complexity. Things can go wrong at any time. But this morning has been a great start."
He didn't want to set a date, but said that he expected scientists would be able to conduct collisions for their experiments "within a few months."
The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.
Scientists hope to eventually send two beams of protons through two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space. The paths of these beams will cross, and a few protons will collide. The collider's two largest detectors — essentially huge digital cameras weighing thousands of tons — are capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about "dark matter," antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the "God particle" because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.
The supercooled magnets that guide the proton beam heated slightly in the morning's first test, leading to a pause to recool them before trying the opposite direction.
The start of the collider came over the objections of some who feared the collision of protons could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro-black holes, subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.
"It's nonsense," said James Gillies, chief spokesman for CERN.
CERN was backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking , who declared the experiments to be absolutely safe.
Gillies told the AP that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel.
Nothing of the sort occurred Wednesday, though the accelerator is still probably a year away from full power.
The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers from 80 nations. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country that contributed US$531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.
Some scientists have been waiting for 20 years to use the LHC.
The complexity of manufacturing it required groundbreaking advances in the use of supercooled, superconducting equipment. The 2001 start and 2005 completion dates were pushed back by two years each, and the cost of the construction was 25 percent higher than originally budgeted in 1996, Luciano Maiani, who was CERN director-general at the time, told The Associated Press.
Maiani and the other three living former directors-general attended the launch Wednesday.
Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons and that there were other forces and particles.
On the Net:
CERN: http://www.cern.ch
The U.S. at the LHC: http://www.uslhc.us/
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