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The SWX Swiss Exchange has entered into an agreement with IVF HARTMANN Holding AG in connection with violations of the Swiss GAAP FER accounting standard in its consolidated financial statements 2006. The deficiencies identified by the SWX Swiss Exchange relate to the incorrect presentation of allocations to the company’s welfare foundation as well as to the disclosure of the freely available funds in said foundation. IVF HARTMANN Holding AG will correct these errors retroactively in its semi-annual report 2007 and consolidated annual financial statements 2007.
IVF HARTMANN Holding AG, a company listed in the Local Caps segment of SWX, made allocations to its welfare foundation without affecting the consolidated income statement 2006. Because Swiss GAAP FER includes no specific rules that would allow such allocations to be recognized in shareholders’ equity, the company should have recognized those allocations as an expense in the consolidated income statement in accordance with the Swiss GAAP FER framework. In addition, contrary to the provisions of Swiss GAAP FER 16, the freely available funds in the welfare foundation were not disclosed as surplus in the notes to the consolidated annual financial statements.
In its 2007 semi-annual report and consolidated 2007 annual financial statements, IVF HARTMANN Holding AG will retroactively correct the deficiencies identified by SWX in the form of a restatement according to Swiss GAAP FER, as well as explain and quantitatively disclose them in the notes.
The Rules of Procedure of SWX permit investigations to be concluded by means of an agreement if, as a result, relevant information can be provided to the public faster or more precisely than would be the case with a properly concluded sanction proceeding.
Periodic reporting in compliance with applicable financial reporting and auditing provisions forms an integral part of the information that contributes to transparent trading in accordance with the provisions of the Stock Exchange Act and the Listing Rules. One of the tasks of SWX is to enforce the transparency provisions that apply to issuers.
