The only company that changed hands was a shell

Twenty-two deals reached us between Monday and Friday: sixteen from the commercial register, six from the press. We read all sixteen registry filings in full. Fifteen were completions — a parent absorbing a subsidiary whose shares it already owned outright, a sole proprietorship converting into a Sàrl for the same owner, a branch struck after its head office merged, a water co-operative transferred to a public authority for nothing. One was not.

That distinction matters if you count register events as deal flow, because the notices say so plainly. The Tiefenbach garage filing of 14 August states that the absorbing company already holds all the shares, so neither a capital increase nor a share allocation follows; the Sandvold merger says the same shareholder holds both sides. Seventeen filings reached the tape, but two are one Gambarogno coffee-machine transfer recorded from each side. This is paperwork catching up with decisions taken between 29 May and 19 June.

The exception was not an operating business. On 14 August Mundra GmbH of Zug became Basler Handwerker GmbH of Oberwil, changed canton, swapped a purpose of trustee and legal consulting for skilled trades, and recorded its two CHF 10,000 shares passing from Solvra AG to Euroinvest AG. The same entity was Hartwell Consulting GmbH until March: three names in six months, a new purpose each time, CHF 20,000 of capital throughout. Something changed hands. It was not a business.

The week's real money went elsewhere. Vaderis Therapeutics in Basel closed an oversubscribed USD 152.5 million Series B on 11 August, led by Life Sciences at Goldman Sachs Alternatives and TCGX, and began a global Phase 3 trial — more than any disclosed Swiss M&A price this week. Netcloud AG took a CHF 75.4 million network-equipment award on 13 August, larger than most mid-market deals we track and the kind of number that never reaches a deal database.

The largest transaction touching a Swiss balance sheet was not a sale either. Varia US Properties handed Brookfield ninety per cent of a USD 694 million joint venture covering thirteen of its seventeen American properties, keeping ten per cent and a role running them. For a listed vehicle trading below the value of what it owns, that is the exit that does not crystallise the discount.