Securities are standardised certificated and uncertificated securities, derivatives and intermediated securities, which are suitable for mass trading.
Securities are deemed to be standardized and suitable for mass trading if they are publicly offered for sale in the same structure and denomination or are placed with more than 20 clients, insofar as they have not been created especially for individual counterparties (FMIO, Art. 2(1)).
Derivatives are deemed to comprise financial contracts whose price is derived specifically from:
- assets such as shares, bonds, commodities and precious metals;
- reference values such as currencies, interest rates and indices.
Note: FINMA regards asset tokens as securities, which means that there are securities law requirements for trading in such tokens as well as prospectus requirements. If a utility token functions solely or partially as an investment in economic terms, FINMA will also treat such tokens as securities.
