Swiss Re

Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd, generally known as Swiss Re, is a reinsurance company based in Zurich, Switzerland. It is the world’s second-largest reinsurer, after having acquired GE Insurance Solutions. Founded in 1863, Swiss Re operates through offices in more than 25 countries. Swiss Re was ranked 127th in Forbes 2000 Global leading companies. It was also ranked 311th & 334th in Fortune Global 500 in 2014 & 2013 respectively.

History

The Swiss Reinsurance Company of Zurich was founded on 19 December 1863 by the Helvetia General Insurance Company (now using the trade name of Helvetia insurance) in St. Gallen, the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (Credit Suisse) in Zurich and the Basler Handelsbank (predecessor of UBS AG) bank in Basel.

On 10/11 May 1861, more than 500 houses went up in flames in the town of Glarus. Two thirds of the town sank into rubble and ashes; around 3000 inhabitants were made homeless. Like the fire of Hamburg in 1842 (which led to the foundation of the first professional reinsurers in Germany,), the great fire of Glarus in 1861 showed that insurance coverage was totally inadequate in Switzerland in the event of such a catastrophe. Hence the need to provide more effective means of coping with the risks posed by such devastation.

.swiss

.swiss is a top-level domain (TLD) for Switzerland. It was approved by ICANN as a TLD on 16 Oct 2014. This is meant to augment the traditional .ch TLD.

The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) began registering .swiss domains as of 7 September 2015. Open registration to other legal entities begins from 11 January 2016.

See also

References

Switzerland

Switzerland (/ˈswɪtsərlənd/), officially the Swiss Confederation (Latin: Confoederatio Helvetica, hence its abbreviation CH), is a country in Europe. While still named the "Swiss Confederation" for historical reasons, modern Switzerland is a federal directorial republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities, called Bundesstadt ("federal city"). The country is situated in Western and Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8 million people is concentrated mostly on the Plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global and economic centres, Zürich and Geneva.

The establishment of the Swiss Confederation is traditionally dated to 1 August 1291, which is celebrated annually as the Swiss National Day. The country has a long history of armed neutrality—it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815—and did not join the United Nations until 2002. Nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to numerous international organizations, including the second largest UN office. On the European level, it is a founding member of the European Free Trade Association, but notably it is not part of the European Union, nor the European Economic Area. However the country does participate in the Schengen Area and the EU's single market through a number of bilateral treaties.

Swiss International Air Lines

Swiss International Air Lines AG (short Swiss, stylized as SWISS) is the flag carrierairline of Switzerland operating scheduled services in Europe and to North America, South America, Africa and Asia. Its main hub is Zurich Airport, with a focus city operation at Geneva Airport. The airline was formed after the 2002 bankruptcy of Swissair, Switzerland's former flag carrier.

Swiss is a member of the Star Alliance. It is a subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, with headquarters at EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg near Basel, Switzerland, and an office at Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland. The company's registered office is in Basel. The airline uses the IATA Code LX that it inherited from the Swiss regional airline Crossair (Swissair's code was SR). The ICAO code is SWR, inherited from Swissair (Crossair's was CRX), in order to keep international traffic rights.

History

Beginnings

Swiss was formed after the 2002 bankruptcy of Swissair, Switzerland's former flag carrier. Crossair had 40% of its income come from the defunct Swissair. The new airline's losses totaled $1.6 billion from startup until 2005. Swissair's biggest creditors, Credit Suisse and UBS, sold part of Swissair's assets to Crossair, the regional counterpart to the transatlantic Swissair. At the time, both Swissair and Crossair were under the same holding company, called SAirGroup. Crossair later changed its name to Swiss, and the new national airline started its operations officially on 31 March 2002. The airline was first owned by institutional investors (61.3%), the Swiss Confederation (20.3%), cantons and communities (12.2%) and others (6.2%). Swiss also owns subsidiary companies Swiss Sun (100%) and Crossair Europe (99.9%). It has a total of 7,383 employees.