Hello All,
Could you please recommend a payroll company, specifically for working with pharma industry in Basel? I know of Hays, but hardly any other.
Would be grateful for sharing your experiences.
Thanks!

There are others(e.g Stamford) but Roche (certainly) and Novartis (I think) pay contractors through the Hays timesheet system anyway, for which you'll pay extra on top of your payroll company's commission, so you may find it works out more expensive and complicated if you do use another 3rd party company as well.

That's true, and H. offered me appallingly poor retention rate. I happen to know the gross rate, and the difference these guys charge is huge, much more than with my previous clients/payroll companies. Is there any way to fight this? I mean, the "normal" way to deal with this is to take advantage of competition among payroll companies, but if, like you said, the competition has been artificially suppressed, which seems to be the case here? Is this normal practice in Switzerland for a major corporation to work like this, creating an artificial monopoly among service providers?

Why are companies in business? To make a profit!
By law the payroll company has to pay social charges & insurances of about 14% & has notice, sickness & accident obligations to it's employees.
Unless the mark up is at least 30% it's a total waste of time as the gross margin is only going to be about 12%.

You could set up a payroll company yourself if you want!

What they have done is move the hassle and overhead in paying all the contractors to 'one' company, thus reducing their own costs.

Nice. First you get to service all contractors working for a huge multinational. Not a bad deal already. Then you can charge each of them 4-5 times the price you charged before because they have no other choice. This is almost like license to print money.

Their client companies think it's a good deal for them as they save money, so this is clearly is not a license to print money.

The best I could negotiate was chf100 a day, so @2k a month, but that was through a bona fide agency who 'employed' me and also dealt with two permit renewals.
I did look and found a much cheaper company, but as they weren't a preferred supplier I was urinating in the wind.

If you can strike up a relationship with your agent then perhaps you can get their margin reduced, especially if it's only a renewal, possibly.