Hello! Does anyone have any direct experience with holding shares of a swiss stock with Interactive Brokers?
I know the shares would be owned in the “street name” of Interactive Brokers. But would I still be able to proxy vote and/or participate in annual general meetings?
yes you can, but with substantial fees I think. Probably as much as 300CHF.
@Jiamin are you sure it’s possible?
IB keeps all securities in the street name and afaik it doesn’t offer the option to register your stocks.
I don’t know how you can get into the annual meeting when the company doesn’t have your name in the shareholder register.
This is true.
I asked the customer service and got the reply that I need to pay 150 CHF to register with my name and 150 CHF to de-register. I don’t why de-register is necessary but it is what it is. Hence I mentioned 300 CHF.
That’s interesting, thanks for the info…but 150CHF (maybe 300 !) is outrageously expensive.
I’m certainly not going to use this service anytime soon 
Speaking of that, I found that Degiro charges 100CHF for registering for the general annual meeting, but I have no first-hand experience with it. Do you know the fee of such service (hopefully zero as it should be) of other brokers? Like cornertrade? Swissquote?
-Swissquote
-Postfinance
-Credit Suisse
-Migros Bank
All free for registering the shares (of Swiss companies) in your name.
3 Likes
amazing. thanks.
need to type 20 characters more…
So if i buy lets say shares from Jungfraubahn or Lindt and i want to receive there Chocolat Box, i need to pay Sfr. 150.- or Sfr. 300.- chf to register my adresse? =/
A share of Lindt & Sprüngli costs currently CHF 88k…
Either you buy it because you believe it goes further up and then the CHF 150 is peanuts or you want just chocolate, then you should go to Coop.
Afaik, they changed the box distribution in the last years. Now it^s just one box per person attending the AGM, irrespective if you own 5 shares or 1. (could be solved by handing out 4 proxies to 4 friends).
My sis has a share and the box is definitely nice but not much more than that. Given the costs for the initial investment, not really worth to buy a share just for the chocolate.
1 Like
I agree. It makes no sense to buy the share for the chocolate. Yet it makes perfect sense to switch a broker for the chocolate. Now I am thinking about transfering all my swiss shares to a swiss broker, simply because of the chocolate box. haah
If you already own Lindt shares it probably doesn’t make sense to switch broker anyway.
The 150 or 300 CHF IB is asking to register the share is outrageously expensive, but:
- it’s only one-off and would probably be easily compensated by their lower fees on everything else
- as @TrickMcDave said it’s peanuts compared to the stock price
this is without taking into account that you probably will incur in additional fees for the position transfer itself.
But never underestimate the convincing power of chocolate 
150 CHF every year??
Registration of shares usually only needs to be done and lasts as long as shares aren’t sold/transferred.