This chapter analyses the ownership of Swiss corporations in the last decades. A main finding is that in listed companies, there has been a substantial decrease of the fraction of ownership by the top three shareholders. For example, for the listed companies ranked 21 to 100, the median stake of the three largest shareholders dropped from 42.5% in 2008 to 36.6% in 2018. More generally, the concentration of the disclosed shareholders has decreased. Non-domestic investors hold large stakes in companies listed in Switzerland and have become more important in the largest, most mature companies – not only have their share ownership significantly increased, but they are also more active in exercising their voting rights and in engaging with companies. We also provide some evidence, drawing on a series of surveys of market participants, that these developments, especially the presence and increasing activity of non-domestic investors, have direct implications on the governance practice of companies listed in Switzerland.

Most high-profile climate change litigation against major fossil fuel companies have yet to be decided. These cases are legally difficult, insofar as they face several procedural and substantive doctrinal hurdles. Yet, even before litigants get to a trial on the merits and an eventual judgement, they use the cases to influence different audiences. This chapter considers the key characteristics of high-profile climate litigation brought against Carbon Majors, using a temporal framing that characterizes cases by whether (1) they look into the past (liability cases) or (2) they focus on the present and the future (fraud claims, disclosure claims, and human rights procedures). This chapter then introduces a discussion on how to assess some of the direct and indirect regulatory and financial impacts of such cases. Focusing on the indirect financial impacts, this chapter suggests that event studies could be applied to assess the potential impact of climate litigation on the stock prices of defendant companies.