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London - Frantic foreign exchange trading after the Swiss National Bank scrapped its euro cap on the franc took $100bn off the value of Switzerland's blue-chips on Thursday, putting them on track for their biggest one-day fall in at least 25 years.
The Swiss blue-chip SMI index slumped more than 8.6%, with stocks including Swatch, luxury-goods firm Richemont and cement-maker Holcim down between 12 and 14% in what some traders described as "carnage".
Swiss-listed shares of offshore drilling contractor Transocean slumped to an all-time low. Lenders Julius Baer and UBS were down 10%.
The SNB's shock decision to discontinue the cap against the euro it introduced on Septemeber 6, 2011 to fight recession and deflation pressures sent the Swiss franc soaring by almost 30%, a move that rippled through global markets and which was seen hurting Swiss firms' exporting power.
Swatch Chief Executive Nick Hayek called the decision "a tsunami" for Switzerland's economy.
"It's carnage," Central Markets Investment Management's head of trading, Darren Courtney-Cook, said.
"I'm a seller of Europe here."
Stock markets fell across the region. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 1.3%.
"Equity markets have been shaken out by the Swiss move," IG market analyst, David Madden, said.
"Markets are still struggling to puzzle out the full implications, but the sudden drop in equity markets as well in the FX sphere shows that the move caught everyone off guard."
