Pursuant to the applicable provisions of FinMA, any person that acquires shares of a company whose shares are listed on a Swiss stock exchange, whether directly or indirectly or acting in concert with third parties, and, as a result, exceeds the threshold of 33⅓% of the voting rights (whether exercisable or not) of such company, must submit a public tender offer to acquire all of the listed shares of such company. A company’s articles of association may either waive this requirement entirely (“opting-out”) or raise the relevant threshold to up to 49% (“opting-up”).
Art. 31 of the Articles of Association includes an opting-out provision and thereby exempts shareholders from the duty to make a mandatory public tender offer pursuant to art. 135 FMIA. As a result, any shareholder or group of shareholders exceeding the threshold of 33⅓% of the voting rights (whether exercisable or not) of the Company is / are not required to make a mandatory tender offer to the other shareholders. In contrast with other companies listed in Switzerland which have no opting-out clause (and no opting-up clause), upon such shareholder or group of shareholders reaching or exceeding the threshold of 33⅓% of the voting rights (whether exercisable or not) of the Company, the shareholders will neither benefit from the option to sell their shares in a mandatory tender offer nor from minority shareholder protection rules related to such mandatory tender offers.
PolyPeptide’s long-term incentive program (“LTIP”) provides that if a change of control (as defined in the LTIP rules) occurs while the participant still holds any unvested awards, then all unvested awards shall immediately vest at target. For more information on our LTIP, please refer to section 5.1.4 “Long-term incentive program” of the Remuneration Report 2022.
Other than in relation to PolyPeptide’s LTIP, there are no agreements or schemes in place containing change of control clauses benefiting members of the Board of Directors and / or the Executive Committee.