In June 2018 the Swiss Federal Parliament passed the Financial Services Act and the Financial Institutions Act, and on 23 October 2018 the Swiss Federal Council presented the ordinances implementing these acts for public consultation until early February 2019. It is expected that the acts and its ordinances will become effective on 1 January 2020. Modeled largely after the EU prospectus framework, the new prospectus regime marks a veritable paradigm change to Swiss capital market regulation, introducing a number of novelties for issuers of securities in the Swiss market, such as the requirement for an ex ante approval for most financial instruments, coupled with some important long-awaited explicit exemptions from such requirement and the requirement for a prospectus for secondary public offerings.

By Christian Rehm / René Bösch (Reference: CapLaw-2018-56)