Photoglob Ag

Shareholders of Photoglob AG

Switzerland keeps no public shareholder register for an Aktiengesellschaft. The share register is held by the company itself and is not filed with the commercial register, so direct holdings are normally not publicly available. In this case one register publication does disclose the position: the merger entry for the acquiring company, published in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce on 26 October 2020, states that because the acquiring company held all of the shares of the transferring company, neither a capital increase nor any allotment of shares took place. On that published basis the direct shareholding as at the merger agreement of 22 September 2020 was:

The percentage is of share capital. It is stated because the register publication itself says all shares were held, not because a percentage was computed or inferred; no figure has been apportioned or multiplied through a chain.

A related official publication records a share matter without naming any holder: the Richteramt Olten-Gösgen declared 20 registered shares void (Kraftloserklärung) in a publication of 10 September 2020, case reference OGZPR.2020.144, giving a value of CHF 10.00 per share, which matches the nominal value of the company’s registered shares. The publication identifies no applicant and no shareholder, and nothing is inferred here about who held those 20 shares.

Earlier holdings are company-stated only and are not confirmed by any register entry. Orell Füssli AG’s own published history of its firm states that Orell Füssli founded the predecessor business as a sales subsidiary in 1889, that the share majority was acquired in 2010 by Gion Schneller, that Orell Füssli Holding AG sold its remaining minority holding in 2015, and that all shares of Photoglob AG were acquired in 2018 by the acquirer named above. No percentage is given for that minority holding and none is asserted here. Gion Schneller is named in Swiss commercial-register publications for Photoglob AG in an official capacity, as Geschäftsführer and later as Mitglied des Verwaltungsrates; the shareholding attributed to him is the former parent’s statement about itself and its subsidiary, not a register fact, and the dates of the register’s 2018 officer and capital changes are consistent with a change of control in that year without evidencing one.

Ultimate beneficial ownership

No ultimate beneficial owner can be established from a filing, and none is asserted. The sole shareholder disclosed by the register is a legal entity, and a corporate shareholder is not itself a beneficial owner. The acquirer’s own commercial-register record, UID CHE-109.277.637, records no parent, no controlling holder and no group link above it, and Switzerland operates no public beneficial-ownership register. Going further would require that company’s own share register, which is not public. A separately registered entity of similar name and the same locality exists at Hägendorf, but a shared name and a shared address are not evidence of control and no filing links the two, so no chain is drawn. Because no link above the sole shareholder is evidenced, no percentage is multiplied through and no threshold has been applied.

Data availability

Historical. At the direct-shareholder level the record is, unusually for Switzerland, complete for the moment it was published: a single named legal entity held all the shares, stated in the register’s own merger publication of 26 October 2020. It is classified as Historical rather than Full because Photoglob AG was deleted from the register on 21 October 2020, so no holding in it is current and none can become current; the figure describes a company that no longer exists. At the beneficial-ownership level the honest classification is different and is stated above: Switzerland publishes no shareholder register for an Aktiengesellschaft and no beneficial-ownership register, so that layer is Not public rather than merely unfound. What the Swiss register does publish instead of holdings is the company’s capital structure, its officers and their signature authority, its purpose and seat, and any merger, capital change or deletion, each with a publication date.

Sources

• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, publication HR02-1005007912, "Mutation Buchzentrum AG (BZ), Hägendorf", published 26 October 2020 — merger agreement of 22 September 2020, balance sheet as at 30 June 2020, transferred assets and liabilities, and the statement that the acquiring company held all shares of the transferring company.
• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt / SHAB-FOSC), publication HR03-1005007925, "Löschung Photoglob AG, Hägendorf", published 26 October 2020; deletion date 21 October 2020, cantonal daily register no. 4692 of 21 October 2020, Handelsregisteramt des Kantons Solothurn.
• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, publication 4293155, published 15 June 2018 — statute amendment of 30 May 2018 and share capital of CHF 100,000 in 10,000 registered shares of CHF 10.
• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, publication AW01-0000014838, issued by the Richteramt Olten-Gösgen and published 10 September 2020, case reference OGZPR.2020.144 — Kraftloserklärung (declaration of nullity) of 20 registered shares, stated value CHF 10.00 each.
• Zefix, the Swiss Central Business Names Index (Federal Office of Justice), entity record for Photoglob AG, UID CHE-105.935.849, EHRA ID 136177, read 7 October 2026.
• Zefix entity records for Buchzentrum AG (BZ), UID CHE-109.277.637, EHRA ID 628125, and for Rud. Suter AG, UID CHE-106.980.278, EHRA ID 188892, read 7 October 2026.
• Orell Füssli AG, company-published anniversary history of its own firm, read 7 October 2026 — company-stated account of the 1889 founding of the sales subsidiary, the 2010 acquisition of the share majority, the 2015 sale of the remaining minority holding and the 2018 acquisition of all shares. Company-stated, not a register record.
• GLEIF Level 1 reference data, queried 7 October 2026 by registration number CHE-105.935.849 — no LEI record returned. Control query on registration number CHE-105.909.036 in the same session returned one record, confirming the filter works and the nil result is evidential.

Directors and officers of Photoglob AG

Photoglob AG was deleted from the commercial register on 21 October 2020, published 26 October 2020. No officer of Photoglob AG is current, and none can be: every registration lapsed when the company ceased to exist. The table gives the last published position, that is the persons and the body recorded in the register immediately before deletion, with the publication that entered each of them. Swiss register publications also carry each person’s place of origin and place of residence; those are withheld here. Role is recorded as the register records it and says nothing about any person’s occupation elsewhere.

No Liquidator was ever registered, and none should be expected: the company was not wound up but merged, its assets and liabilities passing to the acquiring company, so the liquidation roles never arose. The merger publication of 26 October 2020 refers to a confirmation given by the state-supervised audit firm without naming it, which is consistent with, but does not by itself evidence, the audit firm named above.

Recent officer changes

• Gion Schneller ceased to be a registered signatory — effective on the cantonal daily register entry of 23 July 2020, published in the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce on 28 July 2020. He had earlier been Geschäftsführer, then Mitglied des Verwaltungsrates from the publication of 7 October 2016, then a signatory only from the publication of 8 June 2018.
• Peter Rutishauser ceased to be Mitglied des Verwaltungsrates (member of the board of directors) — effective on the cantonal daily register entry of 26 May 2020, published 29 May 2020. He had been Präsident des Verwaltungsrates from the publication of 7 October 2016 until that of 8 June 2018.
• All remaining registrations lapsed on the deletion of the company — register deletion 21 October 2020, published 26 October 2020.

Data availability

Historical. This is the only honest classification for a deleted company: the last published position is all that can exist, because there is no live entry to be current and no future filing can be made. Within that limit the record is good rather than thin — the officer entries are the register’s own publications, each carrying a cantonal daily register date and a gazette publication date, and the sequence of entries and departures from 7 October 2016 to the deletion can be read continuously, so the position immediately before deletion is reconstructed from publications rather than assumed. Two caveats apply. First, the retained publication series begins on 7 October 2016; entries made before that date are not readable through the free interfaces used here, so persons who left before 2016 are not covered and the appointment date of the audit firm is not established. Second, a person is shown above only where no termination has been published, and the roles are reproduced in the register’s German wording because the register distinguishes a board chair, a board member, a managing officer and a mere signatory, which a single English word would flatten.

Sources

• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, officer publications 3096695 (7 October 2016), 3992743 (16 January 2018), 4278365 (8 June 2018), 1004605449 (8 April 2019), 1004899640 (29 May 2020) and 1004946650 (28 July 2020), all Handelsregisteramt des Kantons Solothurn.
• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt / SHAB-FOSC), publication HR03-1005007925, "Löschung Photoglob AG, Hägendorf", published 26 October 2020; deletion date 21 October 2020, cantonal daily register no. 4692 of 21 October 2020, Handelsregisteramt des Kantons Solothurn.
• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, publication HR02-1005007912, "Mutation Buchzentrum AG (BZ), Hägendorf", published 26 October 2020 — merger agreement of 22 September 2020, balance sheet as at 30 June 2020, transferred assets and liabilities, and the statement that the acquiring company held all shares of the transferring company.
• Zefix, the Swiss Central Business Names Index (Federal Office of Justice), entity record for Photoglob AG, UID CHE-105.935.849, EHRA ID 136177, read 7 October 2026.
• Handelsregisteramt des Kantons Solothurn, Wengimattstrasse 2, 4710 Balsthal, register office no. 241 — cantonal register of record. Its web excerpt renders only in a browser session and document download requires authentication, so the register’s own date of first entry could not be read free; a control request to the Zurich cantonal portal in the same session did return a full record for Rud. Suter AG, UID CHE-106.980.278, confirming the portals answer when a record is held.

Group structure of Photoglob AG

Only relationships carried by an official register record are tabulated. Both are historical: Photoglob AG was deleted on 21 October 2020, so it has no current parent, no current subsidiary, no sister company and no registered branch. Its register record lists no branch office and no further main office.

One further relationship is company-stated only and is deliberately kept out of the table because no filing evidences it. Orell Füssli AG’s own published history of its firm states that Orell Füssli founded the predecessor business as a sales subsidiary in 1889, held an interest in the company thereafter, and that Orell Füssli Holding AG sold its remaining minority holding in 2015. No percentage is given and none is asserted. The Swiss National Library’s published description of the Photoglob-Wehrli archive gives the corporate chain behind the present name: Photochrom & Co., founded in Zurich in 1889; Photoglob & Co. AG from the 1895 combination with the collotype printers Schroeder & Co.; Photoglob-Wehrli & Co. AG from the 1924 merger with Gebrüder Wehrli; the Geneva picture publisher Vouga acquired in 1928; and the name Photoglob AG in use since 1974. The 1974 step is a renaming and so the same legal person, whereas the 1895 and 1924 steps were mergers, each of which extinguishes a legal person. The register itself does not carry these earlier names — its record for Photoglob AG lists no former name, and a search of the register including deleted entities returns no entity called Photoglob-Wehrli — so the pre-1974 chain is library and company history, not register evidence, and no continuity of legal personality back to 1889 is claimed here.

Recent structural changes

• Merger into Buchzentrum AG (BZ), UID CHE-109.277.637 — merger agreement 22 September 2020, balance sheet as at 30 June 2020, assets of CHF 1,342,399.32 and third-party liabilities of CHF 1,330,303.93 transferred; Photoglob AG deleted 21 October 2020, published 26 October 2020. No capital increase and no share allotment were made, because the acquirer already held all the shares.
• End of the Orell Füssli relationship, company-stated and not register-evidenced — Orell Füssli Holding AG stated the sale of its remaining minority holding in 2015, and the acquisition of all shares by the acquirer named above in 2018.
• Absorption of Rud. Suter AG, UID CHE-106.980.278, into Photoglob AG — that company deleted from the register on 6 July 2006.

Data availability

Historical. The register evidences two structural relationships and both have ended, the later of them by the merger that extinguished Photoglob AG on 21 October 2020; no current structure exists or can exist. The merger is documented to an unusual standard for a Swiss private company, because a merger publication must recite the agreement date, the balance-sheet date, the amounts transferred and the fact that the acquirer held all the shares, and that publication exists for both sides. Against that, the earlier structure is thin: the register retains no former names for this entity, publication texts before 7 October 2016 are not readable through the free interfaces, and the Orell Füssli relationship and the whole pre-1974 chain of predecessor firms rest on company and national-library history rather than on filings, which is why they are reported in prose and excluded from the table.

Sources

• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce, publication HR02-1005007912, "Mutation Buchzentrum AG (BZ), Hägendorf", published 26 October 2020 — merger agreement of 22 September 2020, balance sheet as at 30 June 2020, transferred assets and liabilities, and the statement that the acquiring company held all shares of the transferring company.
• Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt / SHAB-FOSC), publication HR03-1005007925, "Löschung Photoglob AG, Hägendorf", published 26 October 2020; deletion date 21 October 2020, cantonal daily register no. 4692 of 21 October 2020, Handelsregisteramt des Kantons Solothurn.
• Zefix entity records for Buchzentrum AG (BZ), UID CHE-109.277.637, EHRA ID 628125, and for Rud. Suter AG, UID CHE-106.980.278, EHRA ID 188892, read 7 October 2026.
• Zefix, the Swiss Central Business Names Index (Federal Office of Justice), entity record for Photoglob AG, UID CHE-105.935.849, EHRA ID 136177, read 7 October 2026.
• Swiss National Library (Schweizerische Nationalbibliothek), published description of the Photoglob-Wehrli archive, read 7 October 2026 — founding of Photochrom & Co. in Zurich in 1889, the 1895 combination with the collotype printers Schroeder & Co., the 1924 merger with Gebrüder Wehrli, the 1928 acquisition of the Geneva picture publisher Vouga, and the name Photoglob AG in use since 1974.
• Orell Füssli AG, company-published anniversary history of its own firm, read 7 October 2026 — company-stated account of the 1889 founding of the sales subsidiary, the 2010 acquisition of the share majority, the 2015 sale of the remaining minority holding and the 2018 acquisition of all shares. Company-stated, not a register record.