The Swiss financial market regulatory framework has undergone fundamental and comprehensive reforms over the past few years. The main purpose of these reforms is to harmonize Swiss regulations with existing and new EU regulations and to ensure access of Swiss financial institutions to the European market by fulfilling equivalence requirements. The most important parts of the reform package in terms of Swiss capital markets are set out in the new Financial Services Act (FinSA) and its implementing ordinance, the Financial Services Ordinance (FinSO), both of which entered into force on 1 January 2020 (subject to the phase-in of certain provisions as well as transition periods). 

By Philippe Weber / Christina Del Vecchio (Reference: CapLaw-2020-21)