2016 – Best performing Swiss Shares

And the winner is …… Banque Profil de Gestion, a small private bank from Geneva, who’s business model is based on high ethics and innovation. The value of their shares rose by 208%. Banque Profil de Gestion shares are a part of the SPI Index.

Second best performer was also a SPI company, Dottikon ES, with a 105% increase. Dottikon is a company specialising in fine chemicals. It is led by Markus Blocher, a part of the highly respected political and industrial Blocher family. Markus‘ sister is head of EMS chemicals.

The Swiss Market Index (SMI) closed the year at  –6,7% for the year. The best SMI performers were Actelion (+61%) pushed up primarily by rumours of a takeover by Johnson & Johnson. Second of the Swiss Blue Chips was ABB at + 25%.

At the wrong end of the scale and primarily responsible for the poor SMI performance were

Novartis at -11.3%
Roche at -13.3%
UBS at -14.2%

Novartis would have been far further down the list but for a 10 billion Swiss Franc share buy back program. Novartis shareholders can ruminate whether such a huge tranche of assets was well used.