Brightbridge Wealth Management Zurich

ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss bankers are on the defensive with their secretive industry under sustained attack for sheltering tax dodgers. Some cannot travel abroad for fear of arrest in tax investigations.

But the fur coats and expensive cars on display around the Paradeplatz square at the heart of Zurich’s financial district – as well as booming house prices – tell a different story: business is good in a city now ranked the world’s costliest.

Zurich overtook Tokyo as most expensive according to a new ranking by the Economist Intelligence Unit because of the soaring Swiss franc.

The pall of Europe’s debt crisis is obscuring evidence that the rest of the global economy is in decent shape. Stock markets slumped Friday after European finance ministers said the Greek government must take more steps to secure further aid, triggering the departure of six ministers from Prime Minister Lucas Papademos’s cabinet and fuelling violent street protests in Athens. But away from the noise and confusion of European capitals, and contrary to the outlooks of gloomy Wall Street forecasters, U.S. companies are steadily hiring and investing, generating momentum that will help offset whatever harm comes from Europe’s troubles. While Greece plunged deeper into chaos, the U.S. Commerce Department released data showing U.S. imports surged at the end of 2011, the latest signal that the world’s largest economy finally is on track for a lasting recovery. Canada, Mexico and China were among the beneficiaries, as the U.S. trade deficit with its largest trading partners widened. U.S. imports jumped 1.3 per cent in December, to $227.6-billion (U.S.), the biggest one-month increase since July, 2008. Consumption accounts for about 70 per cent of U.S. gross domestic product, making imports an important barometer of economic health. Demand was strong across industries, including capital equipment such as machinery and semiconductors, which climbed to a record. The trade numbers follow stronger-than-expected hiring figures, including a report earlier this week that showed the fo...

(1888PressRelease) August 21, 2011 - Airbnb announced a $50,000 insurance policy and the formation of a 24/7 customer support hotline Monday after two users recently said their use of the company's travel services had left them the victims of vandalism and theft.

Up to this point, Airbnb - a website that connects travelers with people who are willing to host travelers - had been on a hot streak: It had landed high-profile celebrity and tech investor Ashton Kutcher as an advisor, as well as a funding round of $112 million, which valued the company at $1.3 billion.

In June, an San Francisco Airbnb user identifying herself as E.J. said on her personal blog that a person who rented her apartment on the website had trashed her home and stolen her jewelry, some cash and electronics, among other things. E.J. followed up that post with one Thursday accusing Airbnb of trying to get her to remove her original blog post as well as neglecting to help her recover from the "nightmare" of a situation.

Another Airbnb user, Troy Dayton, told the website TechCrunch that he too had his home vandalized by someone who had rented his apartment through the service and that he'd come home to find "meth pipes everywhere."

After a back-and-forth between TechCrunch and investors in Airbnb, Chief Executive Brian Chesky wrote a blog post Monday saying his San Francisco start-up hadn't handled its users' situations correctly and was looking to make thing...

The pall of Europe’s debt crisis is obscuring evidence that the rest of the global economy is in decent shape. Stock markets slumped Friday after European finance ministers said the Greek government must take more steps to secure further aid, triggering the departure of six ministers from Prime Minister Lucas Papademos’s cabinet and fuelling violent street protests in Athens. But away from the noise and confusion of European capitals, and contrary to the outlooks of gloomy Wall Street forecasters, U.S. companies are steadily hiring and investing, generating momentum that will help offset whatever harm comes from Europe’s troubles. While Greece plunged deeper into chaos, the U.S. Commerce Department released data showing U.S. imports surged at the end of 2011, the latest signal that the world’s largest economy finally is on track for a lasting recovery. Canada, Mexico and China were among the beneficiaries, as the U.S. trade deficit with its largest trading partners widened. U.S. imports jumped 1.3 per cent in December, to $227.6-billion (U.S.), the biggest one-month increase since July, 2008. Consumption accounts for about 70 per cent of U.S. gross domestic product, making imports an important barometer of economic health. Demand was strong across industries, including capital equipment such as machinery and semiconductors, which climbed to a record. The trade numbers follow stronger-than-expected hiring figures, including a report earlier this week that showed the fo...

Swiss stocks fell, with the country’s equity benchmark posting its longest streak of weekly losses since November, as China’s economy slowed more than forecast and concern about the euro-region debt crisis gained.

ABB Ltd. (ABBN), the world’s biggest power-grid supplier, led a drop in shares sensitive to economic growth. Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, the second-largest maker of luxury goods, also retreated. UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), the country’s two biggest banks, followed a gauge of European lenders lower.

Many investment policies have guideline asset allocations that target a constant
proportional weighting between stocks and bonds during both bull and bear markets. A
“Constant Mix” asset management approach is defensible under a variety of commonly
held assumptions. Generally, a recommendation to “stay the course” during volatile
market conditions implicitly assumes that investors, will benefit from a Constant Mix
approach. Investors, however, are not a homogeneous group; and, for some, changes in
wealth may cause changes in risk tolerance. Wealth management, therefore, may require
dynamic changes in both asset allocation as well as other aspects of investment policy
such as rebalancing, distribution and monitoring & surveillance policies.
This article outlines several asset management approaches and discusses the importance
of aligning Investment Policy with investor risk preferences. If the investment policy
ignores this critical “calibration,” there is little hope that the investor will be able to
maintain the policy during recessionary periods. It presents a follow on simulation study
to illustrate the range of possible portfolio evolutions under various asset management
approaches. Finally, it focuses on how investment advisors can transition from static
(“blueprint” oriented) to dynamic (“systems engineering” oriented) investment policy b...

Read more: http://dynamicwealthadvisors.com/category/practice-management/#ixzz1sTWf6Ifj

It is not about price, it comes down to trust
Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 | Filed Under: Practice Management
“The demand in finances doesn’t respond to price,” Trott says. “Having a lower price doesn’t guarantee you more business. It’s not really about the price. It’s about the quality of service.”

A top senator, angry that Facebook Inc. failed to quit millions of preteens from making use of its social networking internet site

Brightbridge is a world-wide private equity firm with the resources and expertise to source, evaluate, and manage private investments globally in both developed and developing markets and across many industrial and commercial sectors.Brightbridge is manager of -- or principal advisor to -- private equity funds covering Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Islamic countries that span the globe from North Africa through the Middle East and into Asia. These funds represent aggregate

Reporting from Washington-
A top senator, angry that Facebook Inc. failed to quit millions of preteens from making use of its social networking internet site, accused co-founder Mark Zuckerberg of lacking “social values” and becoming far more concerned with creating the firm than with children’s privacy.
“It really is my common feeling that folks who are 20, 21, 22 years old actually don’t have any social values at this point,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) told one more top Facebook executive at a hearing Thursday.
“I feel he was focused on how the organization model would function,” Rockefeller stated about Zuckerberg, who was a 19-year-old Harvard student when he designed Facebook in 2004. “He wanted to make it bigger and faster and greater than anybody else ever had.”
The company’s policy calls for users to be at least 13, a move developed to steer clear of federal regulations for sites employed by young children. But a current Consumer Reports survey identified that about 7.5 million active Facebook users were younger than 13.
Rockefeller’s comments came as a Facebook executive for the initial time came below congressional quizzing in a current round of hearings about concerns that technologies businesses are not protecting individual privacy. Executives from Apple Inc. and Google Inc., which sent witnesses to a hearing last week, also appeared at Thursday’s hearing before a Com...