DiKE Die Zinsen im schweizerischen Obligationenrecht. Geltendes Recht und Vorschlag für eine Rev

The Swiss Code of Obligations deals with interest as remuneration for the transfer of money and interest on receivables in a large number of individual provisions. Many of these norms have been in force in their current form since January 1, 1912, and some of them were already contained in the old Code of Obligations of 1883. Since then, only a few of these interest rate provisions have been revised, while the credit industry and the financial markets have changed considerably during the same period and, in addition to new forms of investment and financing, have also produced more precise and complex methods for determining and calculating interest rates and risk premiums. This St. Gallen dissertation takes stock of and analyzes the interest provisions in the Code of Obligations as well as the related case law in order to determine whether the legal regulation of interest in the Code of Obligations has kept pace with these developments and to point out possibilities for adapting the current law. Based on the identified ambiguities and deficiencies of the current law, a proposal for a revision of the most important interest provisions in the law is outlined. This is done taking into account the consultation draft of the Federal Council of August 18, 2010 on the amendment of the interest on arrears in commercial transactions as well as a comparative analysis of selected interest provisions in European law and in international soft law codifications. Within the framework of this draft, the interest-relevant norms in the Code of Obligations are to be adapted to the requirements of modern commercial transactions and an appropriate, market-oriented and systematic regulation of interest and compound interest is to be established.