SIX Group

SIX Group

Type	Public company
Industry	Financial services
Founded	2008 (2008)
Headquarters	Zurich, Switzerland
Key people	Romeo Lacher (Chairman) Urs Rüegsegger (CEO)
Revenue	CHF 1.838 million (2016)[1]
Number of employees	4,020[2]
Website	www.six-group.com

SIX Group is a financial service provider that operates the infrastructure of Switzerland's financial center. SIX develops and maintains securities trading and post-trading platforms provides financial information and sells cashless payment systems. SIX operates worldwide and is headquartered in Zürich.

History

Founding

in 2008, SWX Group, Telekurs Group and SIS Group joined forces to form Swiss Financial Market Services, which began to operate under the brand SIX Group in 2008. The company provides services in the areas of securities trading (former SWX Group), securities services (former SIS Group) and financial information and payment transactions (former Telekurs Group).

The merged company began operating under the name of Swiss Financial Market Services, before launching the SIX brand in August 2008.

Acquisitions

In 2013, SIX took over the Austrian PayLife Bank GmbH, followed by Norwegian Oslo Clearing ASA in early 2014.

SIX increased its stake in Luxembourg's financial infrastructure service provider CETREL in 2014, which is now fully owned by SIX.

Cetrel and PayLife merged with SIX Payment Services and adopted the trade name of the latter.

Anti trust proceedings

In 2005, SIX Multipay AG launched a Dynamic currency conversion (DCC) function that was only available on SIX Card Solutions AG card terminals. The Federal Competition Commission COMCO intervened and accused SIX subsidiary of abusing its dominant market position. In December 2006, SIX Multipay AG made the DCC function available to other terminal providers and disclosed the interface data. Four years later, the COMCO imposed a fine of CHF 7 million on SIX. SIX paid the fine, thereby ending the anti-trust proceedings.

Business Areas

Securities trading via SIX Swiss Exchange

SIX operates Switzerland's stock market. The main purpose of the SIX Swiss Exchange is to admit securities, operate the trading platform, monitor trading activities and distribute market data. The trading platform operated by the SIX Swiss Exchange and the SIX Structured Products Exchange allows the trading of equities, bonds, derivatives, investment funds and certificates, among other things. SIX provides and calculates indices such as the Swiss Market Index (SMI).

SIX Securities Services - Post-trade services

SIX Securities Services provides clearing services by acting as a Central counterparty (CCP). Once cleared, the firm settles transactions by ensuring that the buyer receives the shares and the seller receives payment. This process includes the management of real-time payments between banks.

SIX also provides custody services for the safekeeping of shares and high-value documents. In this regard, SIX Securities Services acts as Switzerland's central securities depository and has custody of most of the financial instruments issued under Swiss law.

Finally, on behalf the Cantons of Switzerland, SIX Securities Services manages the electronic information portal for land registry data. The latter is run under the name of Terravis and enables mortgage, land and trade registry transactions.^[3]

SIX Financial information

SIX collects financial data from international trading venues and companies in real time, normalises it and sells it to subscribers (Banks, Fund Administrators, Trading Desks etc.). This includes basic information about companies which issue Financial instruments (reference data) and information about measures affecting those instruments (corporate actions) as well as providing prices for the instruments from most trying venues around the world.he services cover over 15 million financial instruments.

Cashless payment transactions

SIX processes credit, debit and prepaid card payments in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and many other European countries. In addition, SIX powers the Swiss Cash machine network and a network for processing payment cards at terminals or online. In Austria, SIX also issues payment cards. Since 2015, SIX has provided a mobile payment solution "Paymit" allowing user to make payments from their smartphone. In Switzerland the firm also processes direct debit payments and provides e-billing services.

Ownership structure

SIX is owned by 130 national and international banks in Switzerland that are also the main users of its services. SIX is not listed on the stock exchange.

Regulation

Several of the business areas it operates in are authorised and regulated by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB).

Sponsorships

SIX sponsors Wertpapierwelt in Olten, the world's first international museum for historical bonds and shares.^[4] The collection comprises around 7,000 items and documents four centuries of economic history. The museum will be re-opened summer 2017 in Zurich as "Swiss Financial Museum".

SIX is member of the FinTech Incubator and Accelerator F10 in Zurich, where staff from SIX and various start-up companies work together with the aim of further developing financial technology in Switzerland.^[5]

References