How to look up any Swiss company: the UID, the register extract and the people behind it

Whether you are checking a new supplier, a potential employer or a business partner, looking up a Swiss company is straightforward once you know where the data lives and how to read it. This guide walks through the UID, the commercial-register extract and how to see the people and relationships behind a company.

Start with the name or the UID

Every Swiss company has a unique identifier called the UID (in German Unternehmens-Identifikationsnummer), written in the form CHE-123.456.789. It is the most reliable way to identify a business, because names can be similar and can change, while the UID stays constant. You can search by either the name or the UID.

What a commercial-register extract shows

The commercial-register extract is the official record of a company. A typical extract tells you:

• The legal name and the UID, the official identifiers.
• The legal form, for example GmbH (Sàrl) or AG (SA).
• The registered office and address, with the canton and town.
• The purpose clause, a short description of what the company does.
• The share capital, where it applies.
• The officers and signatories: directors, managers and who can sign for the company.
• The status: active, in liquidation or struck off.

See the people and the connections

An extract on its own is a single snapshot. The more useful question is usually who runs this company, and what else are they involved in. By reading the officers across many companies, you can see when the same person sits on several boards, or when two companies share a director. That network is often the real story behind a business.

Do it free on Regista

Regista puts this together in one place. Search any Swiss company or person, open the profile, and you get the register details, an interactive relationship graph linking the company to its officers and their other mandates, an AI summary and a downloadable PDF dossier, in English, German, French or Italian, for free.

Cite the official source

The underlying data comes from Zefix, the federal central business index, and the SOGC, the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, which publishes register changes every business day. It is official open government data, so you can rely on it and cite it.