Guide · Switzerland · SHAB / FOSC / FUSC
What is the SHAB?
The SHAB (Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt), the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, is the federal gazette where Switzerland publishes its register entries and its bankruptcies; it goes by three names: SHAB in German, FOSC in French and FUSC in Italian. Here is what it is, how a notice is classified, which identifier ties it to a company, and what you can and cannot read out of it.
The short version
The Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt (SHAB) is Switzerland's federal official gazette for commercial matters, published by SECO, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. In French it is the Feuille officielle suisse du commerce (FOSC) and in Italian the Foglio ufficiale svizzero di commercio (FUSC); in English it is often called the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, or SOGC. They are one publication, not three, and a notice appears in the language of the canton that issued it.
Publication in the SHAB is what gives a commercial act legal effect against third parties: a new company, a change of directors, a capital increase or a deletion becomes binding on the world when the gazette carries it, and a bankruptcy office's notice to creditors runs from the day it appears. The SHAB is therefore not the commercial register. The register itself is kept by the cantonal registry offices and indexed federally in Zefix; the gazette is where the register's entries, and the notices of courts and bankruptcy offices, are published.
How a notice is classified
Every notice carries a rubric and a sub-rubric, a canton, a publication date and a language. The rubrics that matter for counterparty risk:
| Rubric | What it carries | Legal basis the notice cites |
|---|---|---|
| HR — Handelsregister | Commercial-register entries: incorporations, changes of purpose, seat, directors and capital, mergers, and deletions. | Publication under Art. 9 and Art. 35 of the Handelsregisterverordnung. |
| KK — Konkurse | Bankruptcies, from the provisional notice through to closure. | Publication under Art. 222 SchKG, the federal debt-enforcement and bankruptcy act. |
| SB and cantonal rubrics | Calls to creditors, including the liquidation call that precedes a voluntary winding-up, and other debt-enforcement notices. | Varies by notice. |
A company appears in any of these under its UID, the Swiss enterprise identification number in the form CHE-123.456.789. It is the same number Zefix uses and the same number that, with a suffix, serves as the VAT number, so it is the one key that ties a gazette notice to a company record. Not every notice prints it: a bankruptcy notice about a sole trader or an estate, for instance, often carries a name and a canton and nothing more.
What the bankruptcy rubric publishes
A Swiss bankruptcy is announced in stages, each a separate notice under the KK rubric:
- Provisional bankruptcy notice (vorläufige Konkursanzeige). Bankruptcy has been opened; from this day creditors can no longer discharge a debt by paying the debtor, and anyone holding the debtor's assets must surrender them.
- Call to creditors (Schuldenruf). Creditors are invited to file their claims within the stated period.
- Schedule of claims (Kollokationsplan). The list of admitted claims is open for inspection and challenge.
- Suspension for lack of assets (Einstellung mangels Aktiven). The estate cannot cover the costs; unless a creditor advances them, the proceedings stop here, which for a company usually ends in deletion from the register.
- Closure (Schluss des Konkursverfahrens) and, rarely, revocation (Widerruf), when the bankruptcy is lifted.
A deletion of the company from the register, the event that finally closes its existence, is published under the HR rubric rather than the KK rubric, which is why a complete picture of a Swiss failure needs both.
Open by design
The online gazette, eSHAB, exposes a public API alongside its search, with the same rubric, sub-rubric, canton and date filters the website offers, and a machine-readable rubric list. That openness is unusual among European gazettes and is one reason Swiss notices are among the easiest in Europe to monitor systematically. What the gazette does not do is normalise across cantons: the same event is worded in German in Zürich, French in Vaud and Italian in Ticino, and matching it to a company still comes down to the UID being printed.
Querying Swiss insolvencies from an API
Prometiam serves Swiss corporate bankruptcy notices from the SHAB through the same endpoint as France, Germany, the UK, Austria, Norway, Finland, the US, the Netherlands, Denmark, Croatia and Sweden.
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer rk_live_..." \ "https://api.prometiam.com/functions/v1/risk-api/insolvency/search?country=CH&event_type=insolvency&date_from=2026-09-01"
A Swiss record is a gazette headline: the notice title, its publication date, a link to the notice on the gazette, and a normalised event_type of insolvency for a bankruptcy notice (the search does not cover deletions, compositions or debt-enforcement notices). The UID is served where the gazette prints one, which is a minority of notices, and can be used as company_number to look a company up. Filter by event_type, date_from and date_to.
Being straight about the limits: a Swiss record carries no address text and no body text, only what the headline says, so it tells you that a notice exists and where to read it rather than what it contains. A notice is linked to a company record only where the gazette prints the debtor's UID; a notice without one stays unlinked. If you need directors or the register entry itself, Zefix is the place and this is not the tool.
FAQ
What does SHAB stand for?
SHAB stands for Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt, in English the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce. The same gazette is called FOSC (Feuille officielle suisse du commerce) in French and FUSC (Foglio ufficiale svizzero di commercio) in Italian.
SHAB, SOGC, FOSC, FUSC: which is it?
All of them. One federal gazette, named in German, English, French and Italian.
Is the SHAB the commercial register?
No. The register is cantonal and indexed in Zefix. The gazette publishes what the register enters and what the courts and bankruptcy offices announce.
What is a UID?
The Swiss enterprise identification number, CHE followed by nine digits. It is the key across the gazette, Zefix and VAT.
Does the SHAB have an API?
Yes. eSHAB exposes a public API with rubric, canton and date filters.
Does Prometiam hold Swiss company data?
Yes: company records from Zefix (legal entities and branches, no officers), plus corporate bankruptcy notices as gazette headlines, linked to the company by UID where the notice names it.