Migros bought a dental roll-up, and Geneva's bankruptcies doubled

1. Platforms bought, platforms sold

The quarter's largest deals were about platforms. On 14 August Medbase, the Migros healthcare group, took a majority of Ardentis, the French-speaking Swiss dental group that Columna Capital had grown from 12 clinics to 20 since late 2019; it employs about 450 people. Reinsberg, the medtech platform of the Czech investor BHM Group, bought Schaerer Medical of Münsingen, the operating-table maker founded in 1892. In September Swisscom's Axept bought its third Abacus business since April 2025, and Affidea its fifth Swiss healthcare business since February 2025.

The best-known name went the other way. On 30 July Jacobs Capital, which bought Mammut in 2021, signed its sale to CPE, a Chinese alternative asset manager. The headquarters and management stay in Seon.

For an owner in a fragmented trade, such as dental care, laboratories, software partners or medical equipment, the buyer most likely to call is a platform that has bought before. Its price is set by what its own next owner will pay for the platform, and that is worth knowing before the first meeting.

2. July's merger wave is a filing deadline

The register published 1,031 merger notices in the quarter, 768 of them in July. That was not a summer of deals. Swiss law lets a merger contract rest on a balance sheet at most six months old; beyond that the companies must draw up interim accounts (Art. 11 of the Merger Act). Groups that close their books on 31 December therefore sign by 30 June, and the notices appear in July. Of the July notices that state a balance sheet, 90% use the accounts of 31 December 2025 (312 of 346), against 18% in September. July 2025 looked the same, with 800 notices.

Most of these filings are housekeeping. Between 1 June and 13 September, 72% of the register filings classified as mergers or asset transfers stated that one owner already held both companies. Only 6 of the quarter's 58 transactions were visible solely in the register; the other 52 were announced in the press.

3. Geneva's wave, a year after Zurich's

3,722 Swiss companies were declared bankrupt in the third quarter, 18% more than a year earlier. The national rise is slowing; the map is not. Zurich's jump came a year ago, as the cases created by the 2025 reform reached its courts: 289 bankruptcies in the third quarter of 2024, 506 in 2025 and 533 now. Geneva's came this year. It recorded 627, more than twice its 307 of a year earlier and more than Zurich: its highest quarter in our register archive, which starts in 2016. Vaud rose to 393, from 294.

Geneva's court also now often publishes a second bankruptcy judgment for the same company a few days after the first. Counting notices would overstate the rise, so every figure here counts each company once.