Total's former head of operations, Jean-Michel Tournier, is alleged to have told the French authorities the company used the Geneva-based firm to pay bribes to 'certain beneficiaries' in return for gaining access to reserves in Iraq and Russia.
I have come to expect it as naturally as a telephone in the room," said Ms. Smadja, the president of Smadja & Associates USA, part of a Geneva-based family firm that manages worldwide economic seminars.
"My client list has doubled since the changes," said Benoit Junod, a former Swiss diplomat in Belgrade whose Geneva-based consulting firm, A&S, is scouting Serbia on behalf of foreign clients, particularly construction concerns.
"An international mind-set is baked into the DNA of Europeans," said Saul Klein, a partner of the Geneva-based venture capital firm Index Ventures, which has backed some well-known European start-ups, including Skype and the Internet radio station Last .fm
The planned sale, to the Geneva-based commodities investment firm Klesch Group, covers several UK sites including Tata Steel's Scunthorpe steelworks, mills in Teesside, Dalzell and Clydebridge in Scotland, an engineering workshop in Workington and a rail consultancy in York.
Geneva-based high jewelry firm, Boghossian, had well over $3 million of its jewels stolen in what may have been an overnight robbery or a distraction theft, according to reports.
"The whole structure of Swiss banking secrecy has already changed," said Pietro Sansonetti, a partner at the Geneva offices of the law firm Schellenberg Wittmer.
The Spanish practice has sought to dissolve its contract with Andersen Worldwide, the Geneva-based organisation of the firm's international partners.
Their fresh $1.6 million round comes from the New York-based firm Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Geneva-based Index Ventures along with prominent angel investors like Michael Preysman.
Geneva Corp., a Santa Ana-based financial services firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions, named Robert W. Swaim vice president of human resources.
