Switzerland Today

Dear Swiss Abroad,

Making sure the populace has enough to eat is not only physically hard work – the picture shows workers digging up carrots in canton Fribourg yesterday – but also logistically complicated. Responding to a shortage of eggs in Switzerland – the Swiss love an egg – the government has just increased the number that can be imported.

Here’s more on that and other stories from Switzerland on Thursday.

The government is responding to a request from the egg sector. Keystone / Christian Beutler

In the news:  A sparkling future for Swiss wine, more foreign eggs let into Switzerland, more Swiss are thinking about buying a house, and bad news for wolf cubs in eastern Switzerland.

Agricultural research sees development opportunities for Swiss sparkling wines in the face of declining wine consumption. In a survey, half of consumers expressed a willingness to pay more for domestic products than for foreign ones.

From September 1, more eggs may be imported into Switzerland to avoid shortages. During the Covid pandemic changes in consumption habits led to an exceptionally high demand for eggs. In 2022, the average Swiss got through 186 eggs.

The Swiss are once again tempted to buy a home, motivated by falling interest rates. But the Swiss real estate market remains constricted by supply that is far too low to meet demand, according to a study.

Canton Graubünden in eastern Switzerland says two-thirds of all this year’s young wolves should be shot, along with two complete wolf packs.

Keystone

Decca passing on The Beatles, 12 publishers rejecting Harry Potter – history is full of decisions that, in hindsight, look less than good. It seems we can add Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche to the list.

The Basel-based company had the first option on a drug that could now become a leading anti-obesity treatment, the Financial Times reports.

In 2018, three years before Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy was approved as the first weekly anti-obesity medication, Roche opted not to take advantage of its “right of first refusal” to purchase a type-two diabetes pill from Japanese drugmaker Chugai, with which it has a two-decades long partnership.

The drug – then known as Owl-833 – was ready to enter early phase-one trials and was valued at just tens of millions of dollars. It was instead bought by Eli Lilly that year for an upfront payment of $50 million (CHF43 million) and became orforglipron. The daily weight-loss pill is still in clinical trials but could be approved by 2026 and is expected to generate $50 billion in global revenues for the Indianapolis-based drugmaker in the six years after its launch, reaching $14.4 billion in annual sales in 2032, according to analyst consensus estimates.

“Roche passed up on a mega-blockbuster,” said David Risinger, a biopharma analyst at Leerink Partners.

Read the rest of the article and discover why pharma groups have a history of passing on early-stage drugs which go on to become very lucrative.

Château de Chillon on Lake Geneva is the most visited historical building in Switzerland. Keystone

More and more Americans are taking holidays in Switzerland, much to the delight of the tourism industry, which has been targeting the US market for years.

Thanks to additional government funding to boost tourism after the Covid pandemic, Switzerland’s promotional body has been able to afford a Hollywood cast for its campaigns, which feature actors Anne Hathaway and Robert de Niro, half-Swiss comedian Trevor Noah and retired tennis star Roger Federer.

Holidaymakers from the United States are coveted by the tourism industry, as the return on investment is particularly attractive. The average American tourist spends CHF280 ($325) a day in Switzerland – more than twice what a German tourist spends. What’s more, they generally stay for several days in 4- or 5-star hotels. In 2023, they generated a record of more than three million overnight stays.

“Everyone in the United States says Switzerland is beautiful. Everyone talks about it. We had to visit once,” Bobby, a tourist from Texas, told Swiss public television, RTS. “We’re surprised to see how clean everything is, without the huge billboards that are everywhere in Texas,” added Charleen, also from Texas.

American tourists prefer to stay in cities such as Zurich, Lucerne, Geneva or in the Zermatt region, and prefer other destinations, such as Glacier 3000, for excursions. Switzerland has carved out a place on the European holiday map for Americans, alongside Italy, France and the UK, which are still their favourite destinations.

This is what convinced Lee, a tourist from South Carolina, to visit Switzerland. “I wanted to come here because Switzerland is a little bit off the beaten path for Europe,” she said during her visit to Château de Chillon, Switzerland’s most visited historical building, where Americans are the most numerous foreign tourists.

“We’ve seen an upward trend in recent years,” says Yannick Klein, the castle’s marketing director. “American economic growth and the dynamism of the country should also reflect this trend.” The figures for the first half of 2024 confirm that the upward trend is showing no signs of slowing down.