Federal Council Report on Venture Capital in English

In June the Federal Council published a report to provide an overview of the various issues facing venture capital. At the same time several parliamentary motions were answered. After its publication a discussion emerged about the findings of the report. Now the whole report can be read in English.
 
The main findings of the report: “The Swiss Federal Council has uncovered neither an innovation gap, nor an information or funding gap over the past few years. However, it is particularly difficult to obtain funding in the seed stage in Switzerland.”
 
In addition the report list measures that are planned to improve the framework conditions:

• To strengthen legal certainty in the area of quasi-securities trading, the Swiss Federal Tax authorities intend to amend the Circular over the course of 2012.
• As part of the Corporate Tax Reform Act III the Swiss Federal Council plans to eliminate issuing levies on equity capital as well as reforms to the participation deduction system for legal entities.
• The currently pending revision of the law governing stock corporations in parliament foresees the capital bandwidth as a new instrument for increasing or reducing capital: The Annual General Meeting may grant the Management Board the power to increase or decrease equity capital within a specified bandwidth for a certain period of time.