Insights · IBEX
Why we built SME Market
Tens of thousands of Swiss companies have no answer yet to the question of who takes over. Buyers exist. What is often missing is a place where the two can meet without the owner's intention to sell becoming public.
Most Swiss companies are small, and behind many of them is one owner who built the business over decades. Sooner or later that owner retires, or wants to pass on a shareholding, and there is nobody in the family to take it.
The question concerns more than the owner. It decides whether the company continues, whether the jobs stay, and whether the value built over the years passes to someone or is lost.
The size of the question
The Confederation's SME portal reports that in 2024 some 101,427 Swiss companies were looking for a successor, on Dun & Bradstreet's data. Dun & Bradstreet's own analysis of March 2025 counts 90,667 SMEs that will need a succession arrangement in the coming years, 13.7% of companies with up to 249 employees. On either count, small companies are the most exposed.
Preparation is the weak point. A 2025 survey of 499 Swiss family businesses by the School of Management Fribourg, with Bilan, Finanz und Wirtschaft and Lombard Odier, found that only 11% had formalised their succession and nearly half had not started.
And the family is no longer the default. The fourth part of the Succession Study 2026 by UBS and the University of St. Gallen carries the title «Family-External Succession: More Than Just an Emergency Solution».
Why a sale to a third party is hard for a small company
For large transactions there are investment banks and M&A advisers. For many SMEs their cost is out of proportion to the size of the deal. So the sale travels through personal networks, and that has limits:
- Reach.
The seller reaches only the buyers their own circle happens to know.
- Scattered information.
Opportunities sit in separate professional networks, and no one sees them together.
- Confidentiality.
Many owners do not want staff, clients or competitors to learn that the company is for sale.
- Geography.
A good company can stay inside a regional network and never reach an interested buyer in another canton.
What SME Market is
SME Market is a digital marketplace for the sale, acquisition and succession of Swiss SMEs. It is for owners, professional buyers, family offices and the advisers who work with them. It rests on three principles:
- Confidentiality.
A company is presented in an anonymous listing. A buyer sees the confidential information only after signing a non-disclosure agreement for that transaction.
- Identified counterparties.
The platform checks the identity and legal existence of those who take part, on both sides, under its access procedures.
- An open market.
A listing reaches buyers beyond the seller's personal and regional network.
How the platform works in detail, and what it costs, is set out in Twenty thousand Swiss companies a year need a new owner.
A succession should not depend on the luck of knowing the right buyer personally.
What it does not do
SME Market does not replace lawyers, fiduciaries, M&A advisers or financial specialists. It does not represent either side, does not propose terms, and never holds shares, funds or assets.
The financial and commercial information in a listing is the responsibility of whoever provides it. The platform does not certify revenue, EBITDA, valuations or projections, and it does not replace the due diligence that falls to the buyer and the buyer's advisers.
For fiduciaries and advisers
The fiduciary, the accountant or the lawyer is often the first to know that an owner is thinking about retirement or a sale. For them the platform is one more instrument: a wider market to put in front of a client. The advice stays with the adviser.
The platform and the firm
SME Market is operated by IBEX SERVICES SA. It has its own identity and its own function, and the firm keeps it distinct from its fiduciary services.
Not every company can be sold, and a sale is not always the right answer for the owner or for the company. A wider meeting place adds alternatives. The decision stays with the owner.
Sources
Sources: Swiss Confederation SME portal, «KMU in Zahlen: Nachfolgeregelungen» (Dun & Bradstreet figure for 2024). Dun & Bradstreet, «Dringender Handlungsbedarf bei KMU-Nachfolge», 19 March 2025. School of Management Fribourg (HEG-FR), Bilan, Finanz und Wirtschaft and Lombard Odier, Family Business Survey 2025, published 9 October 2025. UBS and Center for Family Business of the University of St. Gallen, Succession Study 2026, part 4. Platform rules as published on smemarket.ch.
This article is general information current at the date of publication. It is not advice in an individual case, and the treatment of any particular structure depends on its facts.
Thinking about who takes over?
The earlier the question is asked, the more answers it has.