Switzerland

Swiss companies come from the federal commercial register (Zefix), the federal UID register, the Swiss Official Gazette of Commerce (SOGC) and the cantonal register excerpts. All five sources are official and open. Four of them need no account; the Zefix REST API needs credentials that the operator enters once (see Activating Zefix REST).

Sources#

Where sources disagree, the register (Zefix, UID register, cantonal excerpts) ranks above the gazette; every value keeps its source, and conflicts are shown (see Company data sources).

Access#

How Cormorant reaches the two sources that need special handling. Both are shown on the source card in Mission Control (Company data → Sources, row Access).

SOGC: robots.txt not applied (official API)#

amtsblattportal.ch serves User-agent: * / Disallow: / for the whole host, its public API (/api/v1/publications) included, so every request was refused as blocked. The API is documented for public use and the operator decided to use it regardless. The source therefore has the robots policy official_api ("robots.txt: not applied (official API)"):

• only this connector's requests skip robots.txt, on both transport paths (plain GETs through the Fetcher and requests with headers or a body);
• its rate bucket (amtsblattportal, 1 request/s, burst 2), the per-domain politeness, the SSRF checks and the storage of the exact response bodies still apply;
• every other fetch, including /v1/fetch of the same host, still obeys robots.txt (RESPECT_ROBOTS).

The policy is reserved for documented official APIs the operator has decided to use; web pages never get it.

The API negotiates its representation: a browser's Accept header gets XML (application/xhtml+xml), so the source asks for Accept: application/json. A response of another type fails as parse with what came back ("expected application/json, got …"), and a cached copy of another type is never used.

Cantonal excerpts: through the premium routes#

The cantonal register portals (e.g. prestations.vd.ch, zh.chregister.ch) answer HTTP 403 to datacenter addresses, robots.txt included. Excerpt pages are therefore fetched only through the premium routes:

• the residential proxy first, in a sticky session per portal host (renewed every 25 requests or 10 minutes, requests on one exit at least 1.5 s apart), with the headers of a Chrome navigation;
• when the proxy is refused (403, 429, a challenge), the request is retried once on a new exit, then the rendering tier answers; refusals from 3 different exits within 5 minutes skip the proxy for that host only, for 5 minutes, doubling while refusals continue (at most an hour);
• never Cormorant's own egress for excerpt pages.

The chregister.ch portals (ZH, BE, LU, ZG, BS, TI) show the excerpt in a panel that the page loads after itself (a JSF request). The source does the same: it requests the page (never from the cache), then loads the panel with a POST in the same residential-proxy session, and reads the panel. Both requests are metered. The portals are asked in German, whatever the canton's language: the German panel is the one verified in production (the English one comes back empty). The rendering tier cannot send that POST, so these cantons need the residential proxy; without it the source answers not_configured. VD and GE have their own portals and are asked in French.

The canton (which portal to ask) comes from what the register already knows about the company (its seat canton from Zefix or the UID register), else from the source option cantons. Only for a company the register does not know yet is it looked up on LINDAS (one SPARQL query from our own egress). The canary (ABB Ltd, canton of Zurich) carries its canton and checks the excerpt route itself.

robots.txt: not applied (official register). Every *.chregister.ch portal and lindas.admin.ch serve User-agent: * / Disallow: /. These are the official public commercial registers, and the operator decided that this source reads them regardless: it has the robots policy official_register ("robots.txt: not applied (official register)" on the source card). Only this source's own requests (excerpt pages and the LINDAS canton lookup) skip robots.txt; its rate bucket (0.2 requests/s), the per-domain politeness, the SSRF checks, the stored exact bodies, the premium route and the billing below are unchanged, and every other fetch of these hosts, /v1/fetch included, still obeys robots.txt.

Cost. Premium-route usage of the source is company-data pipeline cost, not a customer's fetch: its premium attempts are reserved against the internal project company-data (COMPANY_DATA_PROJECT, created on first use under the internal customer with a monthly budget of COMPANY_DATA_MONTHLY_BUDGET_USD, 20 USD; change it in Mission Control). Each excerpt fetch that reached the premium routes is one request_log row on that project with kind company (billing category company, reason = source:ch_cantonal_excerpt), its premium bytes and cost, so it shows with the company traffic and on the Costs page and never counts towards a customer's premium fetches. Your own company requests are metered as before.

Errors: not_configured when the premium routes or the company-data project is not available, budget_exhausted when that project's budget is used up, blocked for a refused destination (SSRF checks). The message says how; a refused page lists every attempt ("all_tiers_failed [proxy 403 http_403, proxy_render 403 http_403]"). The same text is shown with failing canary checks and Test connection in Mission Control, and logged by the worker.

Identifiers#

A company with two head offices (Nestlé AG in Cham and Nestlé S.A. in Vevey) has one UID and two register entries: the record carries both EHRA-IDs and CH-IDs, the entry with the lower EHRA-ID gives the name, and the second seat appears as an address of type other.

Fields#

• Legal name (names.legal): the commercial register's primary entry, as Zefix REST, Zefix on LINDAS, the UID register or the cantonal excerpt (in this order) publish it; the gazette, GLEIF and other sources never replace it, whatever order the sources are refreshed in. Swiss firms often have equal-ranking versions in several languages (Nestlé AG / Nestlé S.A. / Nestlé Ltd.): the others are in names.translations, and other sources' forms (GLEIF's NESTLÉ S.A.) in names.alternates, each with its source.
• Legal form: the eCH-0097 code as local_code (0106), the name in the canton's language as local_name (Aktiengesellschaft, société anonyme, società anonima), the ISO 20275 ELF code and the category. Examples: AG / SA MVII, GmbH / Sàrl / Sagl 3EKS, Genossenschaft QSI2, Verein H781, Stiftung 2JZ4, Einzelunternehmen AZA0, Kollektivgesellschaft MRSY, Kommanditgesellschaft CQMY, Swiss branch UNA9, branch of a foreign company JB25, federal administration 2XJA.
• Status: active; in_liquidation (status BEING_CANCELLED, or "in Liquidation / en liquidation / in liquidazione" in the name); dissolved after deletion; merged when the company was taken over. local_value keeps the source's wording and since the deletion date.
• Addresses: the registered address with the BFS municipality number, and the postal address (PO box) from the UID register.
• Purpose: in the register's language (de, fr or it).
• Capital: nominal capital, and paid-in capital from the SOGC.
• Relationships: auditor, merged_into, absorbed, branch, head_office (Zefix REST).
• Activities: NOGA codes, with their NACE class, when the UID register publishes them.
• People (include=people): every officer and signatory the cantonal excerpt lists, current and former, with role (chair, director, ceo, managing_director, partner, auditor, liquidator, secretary, signatory, member) and the register's own wording, signing authority (individual, joint_two, joint, procuration_individual, procuration_joint_two, none), since/until from the register journal, residence and origin or nationality. Officer changes published in the SOGC are also in events with the people who joined or left. The register publishes no birth dates and Cormorant stores none.
• Events (include=events): one entry per change and publication, with the publication link on shab.ch, the publication and journal numbers and dates, and details such as the old and new name or capital, the other company of a merger, or the people of an officer change.

curl -s "https://api.cormorant.ch/v1/companies/ch_uid:CHE-105.909.036?include=people,events" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CORMORANT_API_KEY"

Freshness#

The gazette publishes every register change on the day it takes effect for third parties. Cormorant reads its daily feed and applies the publications to companies already in the register, without your request. LINDAS and the UID register update daily. A company that is not in LINDAS has been deleted or is not in the commercial register: the UID register and Zefix REST still know it.

Activating Zefix REST#

Zefix REST adds deleted companies, capital, former names, mergers, branches and audit firms. It stays inactive until credentials are set:

1. The operator requests credentials from the Federal Office of the Commercial Register (zefix@bj.admin.ch). The office issues them without charge.
2. In Mission Control, open Company data → Sources → zefix_rest and enter the username and password. Credentials are encrypted at rest, never shown again and never logged.
3. Switch the source on. The source card shows its health and canaries (Nestlé, UBS Group). A wrong password shows as error class auth.

GET /v1/companies/sources then lists zefix_rest as active.

Limits#

• The VD and GE portals have not yet been checked against production responses; ZH (chregister.ch) has.
• Cantonal excerpts exist for the cantons in the source's URL table (ZH, BE, LU, ZG, BS, TI, VD, GE) and those the operator adds in its options; elsewhere officers come from the SOGC events only.
• Cantonal excerpts need the premium routes (residential proxy or rendering). Without it the source answers not_configured.
• Some French-speaking register offices write officer changes as prose, not as labelled lists. Cormorant reads the usual sentences ("n'est plus administrateur", "Nouvel organe de révision: …", "Signature individuelle est conférée à …"). Unusual wording yields an officer-change event without the people.
• The UID register allows about 20 requests per minute. Bulk lookups take their time, and the register answers in the meantime.