The FT has reported that:

Switzerland has warned countries against expecting swift results from its decision last week to water down bank secrecy laws, saying it could take years for the necessary legislation to come into action.

Hans-Rudolf Merz, Switzerland’s finance minister, said renegotiating the country’s more than 70 double taxation treaties “won’t be so fast” as each would have to be approved individually by the country’s parliament.

He could not have said more publicly if he’d tried that what this really means is that Switzerland has really entered into a PR exercise with no real effect.

This is precisely why firstly we need to sanction these places until we get reform into use — which, I assure you would speed the process 100 fold; secondly we need multilateral reform i.e. one agreement available to all comers, and thirdly we need automatic information exchange to ensure that we don’t have to wait for data.

It’s all possible.

And now we know Switzerland will be on official go-slow from hereon in it’s time to ignore their PR and press on regardless for real reform.