Major public enterprises in Switzerland

There are six major public enterprises that provide universal services on the Swiss federal level: Swisscom, Swiss Post, Swiss Federal Railways, Swissgrid, Skyguide, and RUAG. Except for Swissgrid, their governance is very much alike: the state as policymaker defines the framework conditions such as market and enterprise laws and universal service obligations; as owner the state sets strategic objectives, and as regulator it monitors universal service provision and effective competition. In this article, the governance, the strategy, the universal service obligation and the performance of each enterprise are described in detail. Additionally, the authors report on the public discourses about the public enterprises. They conclude that the public enterprises perform on a high level and formulate possible explanations for this finding. [Publisher's Text].