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The position of the Swiss exchange

Listings, IPOs and delistings

In international comparison the Swiss exchange is a market of large companies. According to a practitioners’ survey of March 2026, SIX Swiss Exchange had a free-float market capitalisation of around CHF 1.4 trillion and 241 listed companies, 97 of them domiciled abroad.1 A few large companies dominate this capitalisation. The pharmaceutical groups Roche and Novartis and the food group Nestlé alone account for a substantial share of the Swiss Market Index, a concentration that makes the Swiss market highly sensitive to the fortunes of a handful of issuers and of two sectors in particular, health care and consumer goods.

The IPO market has been uneven. In March 2024 the dermatology group Galderma, formerly a subsidiary of Nestlé, listed its shares on SIX with a placement volume of CHF 2.0 billion at an issue price of CHF 53. At the opening price of CHF 61 the company had a market capitalisation of about CHF 14.5 billion, and SIX described the transaction as the largest IPO placement in Switzerland since 2017.2 In 2025 three companies listed on SIX Swiss Exchange: the biotechnology company BioVersys, the Holcim spin-off Amrize with a market capitalisation of about CHF 26 billion, and SMG Swiss Marketplace Group with a market capitalisation of about CHF 4.7 billion. BioVersys and SMG together raised more than CHF 1 billion of fresh capital. Trading turnover on SIX Swiss Exchange rose in 2025 by 12.8 per cent to CHF 1,135 billion, of which equities accounted for CHF 874.8 billion, while the Swiss bond market saw 558 new listings with a volume of CHF 124 billion.3

The figures show both the strength and the weakness of the Swiss market. Its strength lies in secondary trading of large capitalisation shares, in the bond market and in exchange-traded products, where SIX has attracted a large number of crypto-based products. Its weakness lies in the modest number of new equity listings, which has not kept pace with the number of delistings through takeovers, squeeze-outs and mergers. The most significant delisting of recent years was that of Credit Suisse Group, whose shares were removed from SIX after the completion of its merger with UBS in June 2023, as Part G of this book has described.4 Amrize, which is listed on both SIX and the New York Stock Exchange, illustrates a further trend: large Swiss groups with substantial American business increasingly seek a listing in New York alongside or in place of Zurich.

Zurich, London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam

Among the European exchanges, SIX occupies a distinctive position. By free-float market capitalisation, SIX describes the combined group of SIX Swiss Exchange and BME as the third-largest exchange group in Europe.5 London, which lost much of its attraction for new listings after Brexit and has seen several large companies move their primary listing to New York, remains the largest European market for international equities and the dominant centre for derivatives and foreign exchange. Frankfurt is the home of Eurex, the derivatives exchange that grew out of SOFFEX. Amsterdam gained share trading volumes after Brexit, when European investment firms had to move trading in EU shares from London to venues in the Union.

Zurich cannot compete with these centres in breadth. Its strength lies in the quality of its large-cap market, the integration of trading, clearing and settlement within one group, the stability of the Swiss franc and the legal and political predictability of Switzerland. For a Swiss company, a listing in Zurich offers access to Swiss institutional investors, above all the pension funds and insurers discussed in Part E, which hold substantial portfolios of Swiss shares. For a foreign company, a Zurich listing offers visibility among European investors and the prestige of a market associated with solidity. The challenge for SIX lies in attracting growth companies, which often prefer New York for its deeper pool of technology and biotechnology investors.

Chinese GDRs: a Zurich–China link

A new element in the Zurich market since 2022 has been the listing of global depositary receipts (GDRs) of Chinese companies. In 2019 SIX signed memoranda of understanding with the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges to create a link that would allow Chinese companies listed at home to raise capital in Switzerland. After the Chinese authorities opened the scheme to Switzerland, SER revised its rules on GDRs with effect from 25 July 2022. On 28 July 2022 four Chinese companies, GEM, Gotion High-tech, Keda Industrial Group and Ningbo Shanshan, listed their first GDRs on SIX, raising a total of USD 1.6 billion. The GDRs trade in a dedicated segment with shortened hours from 3 p.m. to 5.40 p.m.6

The legal framework reflects the particular structure of these instruments. The deposit agreement must ensure that the underlying A shares are held in such a way that they can be segregated for the benefit of investors in the event of a restructuring or insolvency of the depositary. The prospectus must describe the depositary, the GDRs, the deposit agreement and the protection against insolvency, even where a prospectus would otherwise not be required. SER accepts the Chinese Accounting Standards for Business Enterprises alongside IFRS and US GAAP. Under the Chinese rules, GDRs subscribed in an offering may not be converted back into A shares within 120 days of the first trading day. After that period, investors may convert between GDRs and the underlying shares through designated brokers, subject to Chinese restrictions. GDR issuers are subject to the Swiss rules on ad hoc publicity, management transactions and interim reporting.7

The scheme grew quickly. Nine Chinese companies listed GDRs on SIX in 2022 and eight in 2023, so that seventeen had listed by March 2024. In May 2023, however, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued revised guidelines, after which the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges tightened their eligibility criteria. Applicants must now have been listed at home for at least one year and must have an average market capitalisation of at least RMB 20 billion over the preceding 120 trading days.8 Liquidity on the secondary market has been weak, since many investors converted their GDRs back into the underlying Chinese shares once the lock-up period had expired. A report of 2023 put the share of GDRs converted in this way at 40 to 70 per cent and recorded that fourteen Chinese companies had raised about CHF 4.4 billion in the preceding twelve months.9 Financial journalists have since described the Stock Connect as a scheme that never quite took off, citing Chinese regulatory concerns and limited global interest.10

For Zurich the GDR link nevertheless has a significance beyond its volume. It connected the Swiss exchange with the largest capital market in Asia at a time when relations between China and the United States were deteriorating, drawing on the Swiss–Chinese free trade agreement and on Switzerland’s reputation for political neutrality. The swissinfo report of 2023 linked the Chinese initiative explicitly to the exclusion of the Swiss exchange from the European market in 2019. For the lawyers and banks of Zurich, the GDR listings created a new field of practice at the intersection of Swiss capital markets law and Chinese securities regulation. They also illustrated how a medium-sized exchange can build a niche through bilateral cooperation.

Notes

  1. Weber and Ní Annracháin (NKF), “Initial Public Offerings: Switzerland”, Lexology Panoramic, 16 March 2026, https://www.nkf.ch/app/uploads/2026/07/Switzerland-Initial-Public-Offerings.pdf. ↩
  2. SIX Group, media release “Galderma Listed Its Shares on SIX Swiss Exchange Today – Largest IPO Placement Volume in Switzerland since 2017”, 22 March 2024, https://www.six-group.com/en/newsroom/media-releases/2024/20240322-ipo-galderma.html. ↩
  3. SIX Group, media release “SIX Exchanges Figures: December and Full Year 2025”, 5 January 2026, https://www.six-group.com/en/newsroom/media-releases/2026/20260105-keyfigures-exchange-december-2025.html. The release also reports a record of 2,099 listed ETFs and 266 exchange-traded products, of which 214 were based on crypto assets. ↩
  4. Walder Wyss, “UBS/CS Merger Completed”, 13 June 2023, https://www.walderwyss.com/en/news/2023-06-13_ubs-cs-merger-completed. The merger was completed on 12 June 2023, the last trading day of Credit Suisse Group AG shares on SIX Swiss Exchange, with the delisting following on 14 June 2023. Part G treats the merger in detail. ↩
  5. SIX Group, “Company”, https://www.six-group.com/en/company.html, where SIX describes itself as the third-largest exchange group in Europe by free-float market capitalisation. ↩
  6. SIX Group, media release “China-Switzerland Stock Connect Gets Off to a Flying Start with Four Chinese Companies Listing Their First GDRs on SIX Swiss Exchange”, 28 July 2022, https://www.six-group.com/en/newsroom/media-releases/2022/20220728-first-chinese-gdr-listings.html. Gotion High-tech raised USD 685 million, GEM USD 381 million, Ningbo Shanshan USD 319 million and Keda Industrial Group USD 173 million. ↩
  7. Christian Schneiter (VISCHER), “Listing and Trading of GDRs on the SIX Swiss Exchange by Chinese Companies under SER’s Revised Regulatory Framework”, CapLaw-2022-35, https://caplaw.ch/2022/listing-and-trading-of-gdrs-on-the-six-swissexchange-by-chinese-companies-under-sersrevised-regulatory-framework/. ↩
  8. Kathy Xu, Luca Bianchi and Cornelia Stengel (Kellerhals Carrard), “Connecting China to Switzerland: The Rise of GDR Listings of Chinese Companies on SIX Swiss Exchange”, Mondaq, 11 September 2024, https://www.mondaq.com/corporate-governance/1515824/connecting-china-to-switzerland-the-rise-of-gdr-listings-of-chinese-companies-on-six-swiss-exchange. The authors cite low costs, speed and regulatory stability as reasons for the choice of Switzerland, together with the bilateral free trade agreement. ↩
  9. Matthew Allen and Kai Reusser, “Swiss stock exchange turns to China after being shunned by EU”, swissinfo.ch, 11 July 2023, updated 28 January 2024, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/swiss-stock-exchange-turns-to-china-after-being-shunned-by-eu/48648866. ↩
  10. Larissa Ku, “Why the China-Switzerland Stock Connect never quite took off”, Euromoney, 23 January 2024, https://www.euromoney.com/article/2cr360z010c1qmtnl9h4w/capital-markets/why-the-china-switzerland-stock-connect-never-quite-took-off/. Only the summary of the article was accessible. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.

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