Sparks: the SME Stock Exchange

Sparks: the SME Stock Exchange

Fire Up Your Growth Ambitions.

Sparks. The SME Stock Market

Are you looking to offer shares to investors outside family members, friends, venture capitalists, and private equity funds? Perhaps your longstanding investors seek to exit to reinvest in new ventures. Maybe you want to raise fresh capital for expansion and growth on a larger scale and prefer to avoid another time-consuming private funding round. Or perhaps you wish to enhance your visibility and credibility as an employer and supplier. Whatever your reasons, we are here to support you.

We understand the importance of meeting the liquidity and transparency expectations of investors. That is why we have created Sparks. Our SME Stock Exchange not only helps SMEs to maximize the liquidity of their shares, it also allows them to instill confidence in investors by subjecting themselves to higher transparency requirements.

 

Do You Have Any Questions?

Our Primary Markets Team will be happy to advise you on all topics related to a listing on the Swiss stock exchange.

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A Sparks listing ensures that SMEs raise capital at the best conditions from investors with a strong liquidity and transparency preference,
by providing your company with:

Deepest Liquidity

Sparks has been tailored to the needs of SMEs to optimize the trading and liquidity of their shares. A condensed trading window optimizes price discovery and the execution of trades for companies with smaller market capitalizations. Sparks issuers are automatically connected to the same trading participants as on the Main Market. 

Regulated Transparency

A Sparks listing is a fully-fledged listing. It is not an “IPO light”, as is the case with some foreign SME growth markets. A Sparks listing therefore means that your company becomes subject to the same extensive reporting requirements and regulatory oversight as on the Main Market. Besides annual audited financial statements, ad hoc publicity rules ensure that investors are immediately informed of any information that materially impacts the share price.

Sparks At-a-Glance

What are the main cornerstones of Sparks?

You can find the listing rules and all other applicable regulations on the SER website. Our experts are here to help you if you have any questions.

The public capital market is a supporting pillar of our economic resilience. The new stock market segment Sparks offers fast-growing companies a new and efficient financing channel and ensures that such companies receive sufficient capital to achieve their ambitions in Switzerland.

Daniela Stoffel, State Secretary for International Finance

Additional benefits include the following:

  • Sparks issuers benefit from a 50% fee reduction in listing fees. As an SME, you will benefit from this reduction when you first list on Sparks and then every time you raise follow-on equity capital on the public market.
  • Sparks issuers – like all listed companies – are subject to Swiss takeover rules, which means that (minority) shareholders benefit from special protection.
  • Sparks allows companies to have their shares listed and not just admitted to trading on a multilateral trading facility as is the case on EU growth markets. The listing status provides access to new investors, and increases flexibility for institutional investors which, according to their BVV2 investment guideline, can invest exclusively in listed companies.
Do You Have Any Questions?

Our Primary Markets Team will be happy to advise you on all topics related to a listing on the Swiss stock exchange.

Get In Touch

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