On 1 March 2017, a partial revision of the Ordinance of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority on Financial Market Infrastructures and Market Conduct in Securities and Derivatives Trading (FINMA Financial Market Infrastructure Ordinance, FMIO-FINMA) regarding disclosure of significant shareholdings entered into force. On 3 October 2017, the Disclosure Office of SIX Swiss Exchange (“DO”) published its annual report for 2016 (“DO Annual Report 2016”) which dealt with many of the questions that lead to the partial revision of the FMIO-FINMA.

This article provides an overview of the first experiences with the new disclosure law, in particular in relation to the reporting requirement for parties with the power to freely exercise voting rights and the reasoning that resulted in the partial revision together with some critical thoughts in this context (Section 1). This article also summarizes the practice of the DO regarding the scope of the term “beneficial owner” (Section 3). Furthermore, FINMA recently made some clarifying comments on the reporting system for collective investment schemes in art. 18 FMIO-FINMA, which will be taken up in Section 2.

By Andrea Rüttimann (Reference: CapLaw-2018-15)