Statutory auditors

Duration of mandate and term of office of the lead auditor

The statutory auditors are appointed by the General Meeting for a period of one year.

PricewaterhouseCoopers AG has served as auditor for the consolidated financial statements since the financial year 2016. The separate financial statement of TX Group AG has been audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG since 2016. Norbert Kühnis performed the role of lead auditor for the first time from the financial year 2023.

Auditorʼs fees

The fees for the audit of the consolidated annual financial statements and the separate financial statements total CHF 0.9 million (previous year: CHF 1.0 million), of which CHF 0.8 million (previous year: CHF 0.9 million) relate to expenditures for the audit conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG.

Additional fees

The total amount of fees paid to PricewaterhouseCoopers AG and/or its affiliated persons for additional services in the financial area, advisory services in the IT, tax and legal area as well as in the areas of compensation and customer service amounted to CHF 0.03 million. In the previous year, fees of CHF 0.1 million were incurred for additional services.

Supervisory and control instruments vis-à-vis the auditors

The nature of the supervisory and control instruments used by the Board of Directors to assess the external statutory auditors and their participation in Audit Committee meetings is described in the “Board of Directors – Audit Committee” section. The system of rotation governing the tenure of the lead auditor sets a maximum term of seven years, in compliance with the impartiality guidelines set down by EXPERTsuisse, the Swiss Expert Association for Audit, Tax and Fiduciary. A regular rotation of the statutory auditors is not envisaged.