Ordinance
on Collective Investment Schemes
(Collective Investment Schemes Ordinance, CISO)

(Art. 2 para. 2 let. d CISA)

¹ For the pur­pose of ap­ply­ing the CISA and ir­re­spect­ive of their leg­al status, op­er­at­ing com­pan­ies which are en­gaged in en­tre­pren­eur­i­al activ­it­ies are com­pan­ies:⁶

a.

which have either their re­gistered of­fice as defined by their art­icles of as­so­ci­ation or their ac­tu­al re­gistered of­fice in Switzer­land or which are es­tab­lished in Switzer­land if their re­gistered of­fice as defined by their art­icles of as­so­ci­ation is loc­ated in an­oth­er state;

b.

which pur­sue their activ­it­ies on a com­mer­cial basis or on a scale which re­quires com­mer­cially or­gan­ised busi­ness op­er­a­tions; and

c.

whose main pur­pose is the man­age­ment of a ser­vices, pro­duc­tion or trad­ing busi­ness.

² Op­er­at­ing com­pan­ies are in par­tic­u­lar com­pan­ies which:

a.

de­vel­op or con­struct real es­tate;

b.

pro­duce, buy, sell or ex­change goods and com­mod­it­ies;

c.

of­fer oth­er ser­vices out­side the fin­an­cial sec­tor.

³ Op­er­at­ing com­pan­ies are also com­pan­ies which in the course of their op­er­at­ing activ­it­ies avail them­selves of the ser­vices of ex­tern­al ser­vice pro­viders or of com­pan­ies with­in their group, provided en­tre­pren­eur­i­al de­cisions in day-to-day busi­ness op­er­a­tions re­main at all times with the com­pany it­self by vir­tue of the ex­press agree­ment of rights to in­flu­ence leg­al re­la­tion­ships, to ex­ert con­trol and to is­sue dir­ect­ives.

⁴ Com­pan­ies in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 13 para­graph 2 let­ters c and d of the CISA⁷ which as­sume con­trol of the vot­ing rights in com­pan­ies or sit on the body re­spons­ible for the gov­ernance, su­per­vi­sion and con­trol of their par­ti­cip­a­tions are not deemed to be op­er­at­ing com­pan­ies.

⁵ In ad­di­tion to their en­tre­pren­eur­i­al activ­it­ies, op­er­at­ing com­pan­ies may also en­gage in in­vest­ments. These may, however, merely rep­res­ent a sub­or­din­ate or ac­cess­ory activ­ity with re­spect to the main pur­pose.