Family offices in Europe and Switzerland are doing well – and they play a not insignificant economic role thanks to the volume of their investments. In Switzerland, five family offices stand out among active investors.
Family offices have undergone tremendous development over the past decade. In the past, they left the management of their assets to an army of private bankers and asset managers, industry portal «Family Capital» (behind paywall) wrote on its latest survey of the 400 largest family offices in Europe.
Today, their appearance is quite different: family offices have taken the reins, are highly professionalized investment houses with a penchant for private market deals. «Famcap» had noted in 2019, together with the consulting firm PwC, how important family offices have now become as an economic factor. As is so often the case, European family offices are following in the footsteps of American ones, which have been active for decades as investors and capital providers with a clear investment strategy.
Switzerland Stands Out
According to «Family Capital», the U.K. is the top European location with 69 family offices. But Switzerland comes in second place already with a total of 55; the number is based on data for publicly known investment activity of the respective family offices.
The Swiss list of top family offices as private market investors dominate:
1. Wecken & Cie, Basel
The family office of German software and real estate entrepreneur Klaus Wecken has made a name for itself as a startup and venture investor across Europe. According to the tech site Crunchbase, Wecken has made more than 40 investments in the Internet, medtech and real estate sectors since 2007.
2. Waypoint Capital / Forestay Capital, Geneva
The two investment vehicles of Ernesto Bertarelli, who made close to 15 billion francs when he sold Serono to the Merck Group. Since then, Bertarelli has been a private investor. His approach is highly professional.
For his second vehicle, Forestay, he brought venture capital investor Randy Castelman on board. Together, they have already made investments in a U.S. cloud provider and in a Belgian Medtech that uses artificial intelligence to further develop computer tomographs.
3. Massellaz / 4FO Ventures, Morges
While Andre Hoffmann, the representative of the Roche family heirs, primarily pursues impact investments and also philanthropy with the Massellaz family office, 4FO Ventures is a venture fund that has been investing in young Swiss startups since 2015. The fund is led by Jean-Pierre Rosat, an entrepreneur from French-speaking Switzerland. The fund is also open to investments from other family offices.
4. Mutschler Ventures, Baar
The portfolio of Mutschler Ventures is impressive. Sylvie Mutschler-von Specht's family office lists 34 startup investments alone – including the fintech Loanboox and the crypto bank Sygnum. Mutschler-von Specht is also a shareholder in Zurich-based private bank Bergos, a spinoff, of Germany's Berenberg.
5. Celeste Management, Geneva
Roosmale Nepveu is much better known in France than in Switzerland, where she resides. Nepveu is a member of the family of Louis Dreyfus, the founder of the commodities empire now run by Margarita Louis-Dreyfus, who had bought out all previous shareholders in recent years. Nepveu owned 12 percent of the Louis-Dreyfus Group shares.
Her family office, Celeste, is a very active startup investor. Its most recent investment was in Getfluence, a French digital media company. In 2020, Celeste invested in the U.S., Israel and France, according to the Crunchbase database.
