Ad hoc publicity fines at SIX, 2019 to 2026: seventeen cases and a CHF 750,000 television interview

Since 2019, SIX Exchange Regulation has published seventeen fines for breaches of ad hoc publicity, CHF 1.92 million in total. The smallest was CHF 15,000, the largest CHF 750,000, the median CHF 80,000. Here is what surprised us when we lined them up: in twelve of the seventeen, the breach that was sanctioned is not a misjudgement of price sensitivity. It is mechanics. An annual report that went out late, an email to subscribers that arrived three hours after the wire, a PDF that a web crawler could reach before the announcement. By count, the plumbing gets the fines. By amount, the largest ones still go to late or selective disclosure: those five cases account for CHF 1.1 million of the total.

The CHF 750,000 television report:

In 2023 we called it the most expensive TV report in Swiss business. On Friday 19 May 2017, during trading hours, Clariant's CEO spoke to a journalist of Swiss Radio and Television SRF who was producing a report for the business programme ECO. According to the Sanctions Commission, he mentioned that the company might announce a merger the following Monday. The merger with Huntsman Corporation was announced by media release on Monday 22 May 2017.

SIX Exchange Regulation stated the rule in one sentence: "Potentially price-sensitive information may not be disclosed without informing other market participants simultaneously via an ad hoc release." The Sanctions Commission qualified the disclosure as negligent and the violation as serious, and fined Clariant CHF 750,000 on 2 August 2019. Clariant did not appeal. Whether the merger partner was named was not decisive for price sensitivity, the decision notes.

The story has a sequel. In a separate case, the Sanctions Commission fined Clariant again on 11 May 2023. The Court of Arbitration largely overturned that decision in an award dated 28 February 2025, which SIX Exchange Regulation announced on 17 April 2025, and set the fine for the remaining breach at CHF 100,000: the 2021 annual report had not been distributed by ad hoc announcement.

All seventeen fines:

Four investigations in the same period ended without a sanction: Kinarus Therapeutics (March 2024), Spice Private Equity (October 2022), Cicor Technologies (November 2020) and Addex Therapeutics (October 2020). The u-blox fine of 31 August 2021 (CHF 25,000), which the 2023 table listed, concerned regular reporting obligations rather than ad hoc publicity and is therefore not included.

What the cases have in common:

Sort the seventeen by cause and four groups appear.

The first three groups are twelve cases, and in all of them the sanctioned breach is one of process. Two issuers did argue that their information was no longer price-relevant; the Sanctions Commission rejected the argument both times. For issuers with primary-listed shares the annual report is today price-sensitive by rule. The subscriber email is a named recipient under Art. 7 and 8 of the Directive on Ad hoc Publicity, and "simultaneous" means what it says. A file on a public server is published, whether or not anyone has linked to it: in two of the three early-access cases, the decisions record that a crawler reached the document before the announcement.

SIX Exchange Regulation has since spelled out the timing for annual reports. Its Notice No. 1/2025 of 14 January 2025 states that there is no fixed deadline, only a "reasonable short period" after the board has finalised the report and the audit report is in. It then lists what was not short enough: 12, 17 and 34 trading days. Printing is no reason to wait, and a date in the corporate calendar does not bind the issuer to wait either.

What changed in the rules since 2023:

• Annual and interim reports. Since 1 February 2024 the rule that they must always go out as an ad hoc announcement applies to issuers with primary-listed equity securities (Art. 53 para. 1ter LR). For everything else there are no per se price-sensitive facts.
• The test. A fact is price-sensitive if its disclosure is capable of triggering a significant change in market prices, meaning one considerably greater than the usual fluctuations (Art. 53 para. 1 LR), and capable of affecting the reasonable market participant in his investment decision (para. 1bis). The rule of thumb in the guideline: would the new fact be likely to influence a reasonable market participant's decision to buy, sell or hold the security, because the current price does not sufficiently reflect it?
• The ceiling. Fines run up to CHF 1 million for negligence and up to CHF 10 million for wrongful intent (Art. 61 LR).
• Flagging. Every announcement begins with "Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR". Flagging a release that contains no price-sensitive fact is not permitted and may be sanctioned (Regulatory Board Communiqué No. 6/2023).
• Structured products. Since 1 December 2025 a 30-minute regime applies to them, with SIX Swiss Exchange as addressee in the evening. The 90-minute rule for all other securities is unchanged.
• The channel to the regulator. From 15 November 2026 the transmission runs through AHPdigital instead of Connexor Reporting, and an announcement emailed during an outage must be filed again on the platform once it is back. We went through the switch and that refiling duty in detail in AHPdigital replaces Connexor Reporting: SIX says no new obligations. We found one.

What to do about it:

The 2023 version of this article ended with four general recommendations: know the rules, define responsibilities, choose partners carefully, have a plan B. The register allows more specific ones.

1. Treat the annual report as an ad hoc announcement from the day the audit report arrives. Three fines came from publishing it late, two more from not sending it as an ad hoc announcement at all. The date in your calendar is not a defence.
2. Test the subscriber email like a production system. Four fines came from a push service that ran late. The directive asks for simultaneous distribution, in every language version.
3. Keep unpublished files off public servers. Uploading the PDF early so that it is ready is how a crawler publishes your results for you.
4. Have a plan B that has been rehearsed. What if the login fails minutes before the deadline? Who else is registered? From November 2026: who files the announcement again after an outage?

This is why we think ad hoc distribution belongs in software rather than in a checklist. Once the decision to publish is made, the rest is rule-bound: one flag, one text per language, one release that reaches the regulator, the information systems, the media, the subscribers and the website together. That is what our ad hoc publicity service does, see our ad hoc publicity page.

Questions and answers

What is the fine for a late ad hoc announcement in Switzerland?
Up to CHF 1 million for negligence and up to CHF 10 million for wrongful intent (Art. 61 LR). In practice, the seventeen fines published by SIX Exchange Regulation between 2019 and 2026 range from CHF 15,000 to CHF 750,000, with a median of CHF 80,000.

What is the highest ad hoc fine since 2019?
CHF 750,000 against Clariant, decided on 2 August 2019, for disclosing potentially price-sensitive information to a television journalist during trading hours three days before the merger with Huntsman was announced.

What do issuers get fined for most often?
Process failures. Twelve of the seventeen fines concern an annual report published late or not as an ad hoc announcement, a delayed email to subscribers, or a document reachable online before distribution.

How quickly must an annual report be published as an ad hoc announcement?
Within a reasonable short period after the board has finalised it and the audit report is available. There is no fixed number of days; delays of 12, 17 and 34 trading days were sanctioned (SIX Exchange Regulation Notice No. 1/2025).

Does SIX Exchange Regulation publish the names of fined issuers?
Usually. Sixteen of the seventeen fines were announced in a media release naming the issuer; the decisions themselves are published in anonymised form on ser-ag.com.

Summing it up:

The biggest fines still go to late or selective disclosure. But twelve in seventeen are about a report, an email or a file that was not where it should have been at the right time. That is a process problem, and process problems are the ones you can remove. If you want to go through your own release process against this list, put a 15-minute slot directly into my calendar.

Regulatory basis and sources: media releases and published decisions of SIX Exchange Regulation and the Sanctions Commission, 2019 to 2025; Court of Arbitration award in the Clariant matter dated 28 February 2025, announced on 17 April 2025; Listing Rules, Art. 53, 54 and 61; Directive on Ad hoc Publicity; SIX Exchange Regulation Notice No. 1/2025; Regulatory Board Communiqués No. 6/2023 and No. 2/2026. Register as of 1 October 2026; amounts are the final amounts after appeal, as set by SIX Exchange Regulation, the Sanctions Commission or the Court of Arbitration. Dates are those of the media release; the unnamed case is dated by the publication of the decision. The current versions on ser-ag.com prevail. This is a practitioner's reading, not legal advice.

This article updates a piece first published on 25 September 2023 together with Yasemin Diethelm of IRF Reputation.