SIX Swiss Exchange, one of the leading European exchanges, is in talks with Indian life science companies for getting them listed on its trading platform, said a top official of the Zurich-based bourse.

Explaining the rationale behind special focus on life sciences companies, Urs Widmer, management committee me-mber of SIX Swiss Exchange, said Switzerland has a group peer group in this segment such as Novartis, etc, which have a combined market capitalisation of $400 billion — the 40 per cent of the marketcap of all European life sciences companies. Apart from this, Switzerland, he sa-id, has a diverse investor base with over $2.4 trillion funds in management. “Currently, deposits in Switzerland give negative return. So these investor would be interested in companies with high growth pro-spects,” he said.

While admitting that equity markets across the world, including Switzerland, are volatile and hence there is a reduced appetite for IPOs, he said this has become a long term phenomenon and there is a lot of liquidity in the market, which seeks to find investments that can give them a decent return.