Federal Act on Collective Investment Schemes

¹This Act gov­erns the fol­low­ing, ir­re­spect­ive of their leg­al status:

a.

Swiss col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes and per­sons who are re­spons­ible for the man­age­ment and dis­tri­bu­tion of such schemes, and the safe­keep­ing of as­sets held in them;

b.

for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which are dis­trib­uted in Switzer­land;

c.

per­sons who man­age for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes in or from Switzer­land;

d.

per­sons who dis­trib­ute for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes in Switzer­land;

e.

per­sons who dis­trib­ute, from Switzer­land, for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes which are not ex­clus­ively re­served for qual­i­fied in­vestors as defined in Art­icle 10 para­graph 3, 3^bis or 3^ter, or sub­ject to equi­val­ent for­eign law;

f.

per­sons who rep­res­ent for­eign col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes in Switzer­land.¹

²The fol­low­ing are not gov­erned by this Act:

a.

in­sti­tu­tions and an­cil­lary in­sti­tu­tions in the oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sions sec­tor, in­clud­ing in­vest­ment found­a­tions;

b.

so­cial se­cur­ity in­sti­tu­tions and com­pens­a­tion funds;

c.

pub­lic au­thor­it­ies and in­sti­tu­tions;

d.

op­er­at­ing com­pan­ies which are en­gaged in busi­ness activ­it­ies;

e.

com­pan­ies which by way of a ma­jor­ity of the votes or by any an­oth­er way bring to­geth­er one or more com­pan­ies to form a group un­der single man­age­ment (hold­ing com­pan­ies);

f.

in­vest­ment clubs whose mem­bers are in a po­s­i­tion to man­age their fin­an­cial in­terests them­selves;

g.

as­so­ci­ations and found­a­tions as defined in the Swiss Civil Code²;

h.³

as­set man­agers of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes whose in­vestors are qual­i­fied as defined in Art­icle 10 para­graph 3, 3^bis or 3^ter and which meet one of the fol­low­ing re­quire­ments:

1.

The as­sets un­der man­age­ment, in­clud­ing the as­sets ac­quired through the use of lever­aged fin­ance, amount in total to no more than CHF 100 mil­lion.

2.

The as­sets un­der man­age­ment of the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes con­sist of non-lever­aged col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes where in­vestors are not per­mit­ted to ex­er­cise re­demp­tion rights for a peri­od of five years after their first in­vest­ment is made in each of these col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes, and amount to no more than CHF 500 mil­lion.

3.

The in­vestors are ex­clus­ively group com­pan­ies of the group of com­pan­ies to which the as­set man­ager be­longs.

^2bisAs­set man­agers of col­lect­ive in­vest­ment schemes pur­su­ant to para­graph 2 let­ter h may sub­ject them­selves to this Act if this is re­quired by the coun­try in which the col­lect­ive in­vest­ment scheme is es­tab­lished or dis­trib­uted. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil defines the de­tails. It may re­quire a re­gis­tra­tion non­ethe­less in or­der to be able to col­lect eco­nom­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant data ir­re­spect­ive of wheth­er such as­set man­agers sub­ject them­selves to this Act.⁴

³In­vest­ment com­pan­ies in the form of Swiss com­pan­ies lim­ited by shares are not gov­erned by this Act, provided they are lis­ted on a Swiss ex­change, or provided that:

a.

only share­hold­ers as defined in Art­icle 10 para­graphs 3, 3^bis and 3^ter are en­titled to par­ti­cip­ate in them; and

b.

their shares are re­gistered.⁵

⁴…⁶