Case-law

In ruling ACJC/201/2024 of February 13, 2024, the Geneva Court of Justice confirms the validity of a clause excluding the benefit of real discussion (beneficium excussionis realis), under which the bank is free to choose between taking action against the customer personally (and thus attacking his entire estate) or realizing the pledged assets in his bank account. The facts are as follows: On May 4, 2013, a Saudi customer entered into a framework credit facility agreement and a deed of[...]

The Federal Administrative Court (FAT) has confirmed that comparis.ch AG (Comparis) qualifies as an insurance intermediary within the meaning of Art. 40 para. 1 ISA on the basis of the services it offers and must therefore be entered in FINMA's public register of unrelated intermediaries (ruling B-5886/2023 of 5 July 2024). In September 2023, FINMA decided that Comparis was an insurance intermediary within the meaning of Art. 40 ISA and ordered it to be entered in the register of non-related[...]

When the bank liquidates the customer's positions and the result is a negative balance, it is up to the bank to prove the losses. Otherwise, the bank does not prove the existence of its claim against the customer (judgment 4A_301/2023 of 16 July 2024). In 2011, a client used a Vaud bank's IT platform to speculate on fluctuations in the USD/CHF exchange rate. On 15 January, the SNB announced that it was abandoning the CHF/EUR floor rate. This caused panic[...]

In a recent ruling 4A_26/2024 of 11 June 2024, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court was called upon to rule on the interpretation of a confidentiality clause contained in a settlement agreement between a bank and a private investigator. Specifically, the key question was whether the parties intended to protect secret information in the formal or material sense. In 2019, a company active in investigation and security services became involved in the "Khan affair", in which it was revealed that Mr[...]

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court has upheld the immediate dismissal of an employee due to his careless application of the bank's anti-money laundering rules (ruling 4A_67/2023 of 12 June 2024). The employee had been working in the Panamanian branch of a Ticino bank since July 2012. He received two warnings, the first on 19 June 2015 following an angry outburst towards an employee in the Legal & Compliance department, and the second on 24 July 2017 for his carelessness in[...]

In a recent ruling on enforcement, the Federal Supreme Court ruled on the question of whether a personal guarantee for an unlimited amount, subject to foreign law, is compatible with Swiss public policy (ruling 4A_650/2023 of 13 May 2024). On 8 December 2010, A, domiciled in the United Arab Emirates, signed a personal guarantee contract in favour of an Emirati bank by which he guaranteed a loan granted by the bank to a company. The contract - subject to UAE[...]

In its judgments 4A_574/2023 and 4A_576/2023 of 24 May 2024, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court has upheld a ruling by the Zurich Handelsgericht (HG210069-O) specifying the conditions under which a waiver of retrocessions is valid outside asset management. The Handelsgericht had left open the question of whether the relationship between the parties was one of investment advice or a simple account/custody account, since in both cases the bank had to return the retrocessions. In its ruling, the Federal Court did[...]

The Geneva Court of Justice recently handed down a ruling on international mutual assistance in civil matters (ACJC/483/2024), in which it refused to consider a letter rogatory as abusive and/or likely to undermine Swiss sovereignty or security (art. 12 al. 1 let. b CLaH70). Alice and Bernard are nationals of State F and have refugee status in Switzerland due to judicial and extra-judicial persecution by the authorities of F. In 2012, F requested mutual assistance in criminal matters from Switzerland[...]

There is nothing new about the fact that an asset manager who engages in churning is liable to a criminal conviction (disloyal management - art. 158 of the Swiss Criminal Code). In its ruling 6B_1118/2023 of 26 April 2024, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court analysed in detail the evidence that would allow a churning activity to be identified or ruled out, i.e. carrying out a large number of transactions with the sole aim of increasing retrocessions. Between 2003 and 2005,[...]

Since March 2020, more than 100,000 Swiss companies have made use of the bonded loans set up by the Confederation to make up for a lack of liquidity following the COVID-19 pandemic. The Swiss authorities' desire to respond quickly to an exceptional situation and to ensure rapid access to funds led them to introduce a facilitated procedure, based essentially on a self-declaration by the credit applicant, which has unfortunately seen its share of abuses. In a recent ruling to be[...]

A few days ago, members of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) were given an overview of the CDB Supervisory Commission's (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) "leading cases" for the period from 1 July to 31 December 2023. Despite the relatively limited content, a few points are worth noting. On procedural issues, the only decision mentioned by the Commission recalls that, pursuant to article 13 of its rules of procedure, it decides in principle on the basis of the file[...]

Obtaining the relevant extracts from the database needed to assess FINMA's guarantees of irreproachable activity (formerly Watchlist) is a real crossroads for an employee who has temporarily given up exercising an activity subject to FINMA. The Federal Administrative Court (FAT) has confirmed that art. 8 aLPD (now art. 25 LPD) does not allow access to the documents that justified inclusion on the Watchlist to the same extent as in a genuine procedure on the merits to determine whether an individual[...]

A recent Geneva ruling illustrates the effects of a residual bank agreement combined with a claims clause when the existence of a client instruction is disputed by the parties in a one-off investment advisory relationship (ruling ACJC/231/2024 of the Civil Division of the Geneva Court of Justice of 13 February 2024). In 2003, a company based in the British Virgin Islands opened a relationship with a Swiss bank. The bank's general terms and conditions provided to the client contained a[...]

A bank that wishes to obtain a receivership against its clients in order to recover an overdraft resulting from an unsuccessful margin call and a liquidation of positions must make its claim plausible by means of detailed explanations and documents. Failing this, the judge must refuse - or revoke - the receivership (Federal Court ruling 5A_515/2023 of 23 February 2024). The dispute that gave rise to this judgment arose from a lombard loan granted by a Zurich bank to two[...]

The right of access under the DPA is abused when a person invokes it against a family office to obtain information concerning a trust and the financial situation of his father (ACJC/1610/2023). A very wealthy Italian businessman has a family office in Geneva, which performs various services for his daughter. Payments to her were made from the father's account. The father tells the family office that his daughter has a budget limit of EUR 100,000 per month. The daughter receives[...]

According to a popular German expression, "Totgesagte leben länger. Despite their oft-heralded demise, retrocessions continue to enrich the civil case law of the Federal Supreme Court. However, practitioners are still waiting for the Federal Supreme Court to take a definitive stance on whether retrocessions in execution-only relationships should be subject to restitution. Unfortunately, these hopes were dashed in the ruling presented here (TF 4A_496/2023 of 27 February 2024): "Damit braucht auf die umstrittene Frage, ob grundsätzlich auch im Execution only-Verhältnis[...]

In a ruling 1C_543/2023 of 7 March 2024, which is intended for publication, the Federal Supreme Court (FSC) confirms its case law concerning the suspension of mutual assistance and the maintenance of sequestration of funds seized in Switzerland in execution of a request submitted by Russia prior to the aggression in Ukraine. It extended the suspension to a sequestration that had already lasted eight years and ruled out the possibility of invoking Article 2 EIMP. The Federal Criminal Court (FCT)[...]

In a ruling 7B_135/2022, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court details the conditions under which commissions resulting from contracts tainted by an offence of unfair competition may be subject to confiscatory measures (art. 70 and 71 of the Swiss Criminal Code). A Swiss public limited company active in private equity proposed, on behalf of a foreign entity, the purchase of shares in a German company operating in the medical sector. The search for new investors generally began with "cold" telephone calls.[...]

In a ruling dated 16 January 2024 (B_4185/2020), the Federal Administrative Court (FAT) upheld a FINMA decision of 19 June 2020 finding that a Swiss company and one of its directors had, as a group, engaged in unlawful securities trading, in the absence of authorisation, as an issuing house that had offered securities in the form of investment tokens to the public on a professional basis. As part of an initial coin offering (ICO) with a foreign issuer, the Swiss[...]

Do a fund manager's own plans and intentions constitute insider information if he engages in front running? This is the question that the Criminal Affairs Court of the Federal Criminal Court is answering in a case involving a former manager of second-pillar pension funds for employees of the canton of St. Gallen. In July 2022, the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) filed an indictment against a former employee of the Finance Department of the Canton of St.[...]