Federal Act
on the Amendment of the Swiss Civil Code
(Part Five: The Code of Obligations)

¹ The ex­tern­al aud­it­or must be in­de­pend­ent and form its audit opin­ion ob­ject­ively. Its true or ap­par­ent in­de­pend­ence must not be ad­versely af­fected.

² The fol­low­ing are in par­tic­u­lar not com­pat­ible with in­de­pend­ence:

1.

mem­ber­ship of the board of dir­ect­ors, any oth­er de­cision-mak­ing func­tion in the com­pany or any em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship with it;

2.

a dir­ect or sig­ni­fic­ant in­dir­ect par­ti­cip­a­tion in the share cap­it­al or a sub­stan­tial claim against or debt due to the com­pany;

3.

a close re­la­tion­ship between the per­son man­aging the audit and a mem­ber of the board of dir­ect­ors, an­oth­er per­son in a de­cision-mak­ing func­tion, or a ma­jor share­hold­er;

4.

the in­volve­ment in the ac­count­ing or the pro­vi­sion of any oth­er ser­vices which give rise to a risk that the ex­tern­al aud­it­or will have to re­view its own work;

5.

the as­sump­tion of a duty that leads to eco­nom­ic de­pend­ence;

6.

the con­clu­sion of a con­tract on non-mar­ket con­di­tions or of a con­tract that es­tab­lishes an in­terest on the part of the ex­tern­al aud­it­or in the res­ult of the audit;

7.

the ac­cept­ance of valu­able gifts or of spe­cial priv­ileges.

³ The pro­vi­sions on in­de­pend­ence ap­ply to all per­sons in­volved in the audit. If the ex­tern­al aud­it­or is a part­ner­ship or a leg­al en­tity, then the pro­vi­sions on in­de­pend­ence also ap­ply to the mem­bers of the su­preme man­age­ment or ad­min­is­trat­ive body and to oth­er per­sons with a de­cision-mak­ing func­tion.

⁴ Em­ploy­ees of the ex­tern­al aud­it­or that are not in­volved in the audit may not be mem­bers of the board of dir­ect­ors or ex­er­cise any oth­er de­cision-mak­ing func­tion in the com­pany be­ing audited.

⁵ There is no in­de­pend­ence if per­sons who do not meet the re­quire­ments of in­de­pend­ence are closely as­so­ci­ated with the ex­tern­al aud­it­or, per­sons in­volved in the audit, the mem­bers of the su­preme man­age­ment or ad­min­is­trat­ive bod­ies or oth­ers per­sons with a de­cision-mak­ing func­tion.

⁶ The pro­vi­sions on in­de­pend­ence also ap­ply to un­der­tak­ings con­trolled by the com­pany or the ex­tern­al aud­it­or or that con­trol the com­pany or the ex­tern­al aud­it­or.⁶⁰⁷