Federal Act
on the Licensing and Oversight
of Auditors
(Auditor Oversight Act, AOA)

¹ A li­cence as an audit firm un­der state over­sight is also re­quired for audit firms provid­ing audit­ing ser­vices as defined in Art­icle 2 let­ter a num­ber 1 or com­par­able ser­vices un­der for­eign law for:⁹

a.

com­pan­ies in­cor­por­ated un­der for­eign law whose shares are lis­ted on a Swiss stock ex­change;

b.¹⁰

com­pan­ies in­cor­por­ated un­der for­eign law whose bonds are lis­ted on a Swiss stock ex­change;

c. and d.¹¹...

² The li­cens­ing ob­lig­a­tion does not ap­ply if the audit firm is sub­ject to the over­sight of a for­eign audit over­sight au­thor­ity that is re­cog­nised by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.

³ Moreover, the li­cens­ing ob­lig­a­tion does not ap­ply to audit firms provid­ing audit ser­vices to a com­pany un­der para­graph 1 let­ter b if:

a.

the rel­ev­ant bonds are guar­an­teed by com­pany that has an audit firm meet­ing the cri­ter­ia in either para­graph 1 or 2; or

b.

in­vestors have been ex­pli­citly in­formed that the audit firm is not un­der state over­sight.¹²

⁴Audit firms to which the li­cens­ing ob­lig­a­tion does not ap­ply in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 2 are re­quired to re­gister with the Over­sight Au­thor­ity. The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late the rel­ev­ant re­quire­ments.¹³

⁵The Over­sight Au­thor­ity shall lay down rules gov­ern­ing the dis­clos­ure of audit firms that are not sub­ject to state over­sight.¹⁴