Anyone entering the Zurich office of Silex near Enge station first notices a shelf on the wall. Lined up on it are empty wine bottles, including many exclusive bottles from around the world.

"A matter of taste - some love it, others less so," says Managing Partner Adrian Steinherr. The company's partners are big wine lovers. For the interview with finews, he and Tino Fotsch, Sales Director in Zurich, arrived in sporty business attire.

Founded ten years ago

Silex was founded in Geneva in 2016 by Xavier Laborde. Steinherr describes the original idea as an "independent investment office" for external asset managers and family offices. But clients soon asked whether Silex could take over the entire management process.

"But we did not want to become an asset manager. So we chose to set up an asset manager in Luxembourg," Steinherr says. For clients, this has a practical advantage: products and strategies appear as a single line item in the portfolio. The group's asset-management bond business in Geneva, with four funds, was sold to Axiom Alternative Investments two years ago, as finews reported.

Many employees with derivatives backgrounds

"The focus on structured products emerged naturally because many of us come from the derivatives area," says Fotsch. He himself came from Leonteq just over a year ago, where he spent eleven years as Executive Director in Structured Solutions, mostly helping build the business with external asset managers. Steinherr has been running Silex in Zurich since 2020. Before that, he spent nine years as a Managing Director in UBS's Investment Bank in Zurich, responsible for the derivatives business; before that, he worked in London for Citigroup, Nomura, Lehman Brothers and Commerzbank.

Still, it bears little resemblance to a classic broker. "We mainly structure our own market convictions," says Steinherr. Fotsch speaks of two pillars: "the human one, with research, convictions and sales, and the technological one."

"Nothing outsourced"

Of the 100-plus employees, only about 30 work in sales; the rest work on the investment side and in downstream processes, including 13 in technology alone. "We haven't outsourced anything at all," says Steinherr. The average age is 35, with a tight distribution - comparatively high for the industry. "For our clients, it is crucial to have experienced and technically proficient contacts," says Fotsch. After all, the client has to trust the person on the other side.

On the technology side, Silex relies on in-house systems, such as the Spark platform. Through it, clients receive real-time reporting on their structured products, including products they bought from other providers. There are also API interfaces to 26 issuers, through which prices are automatically obtained in real time.

Focus on AI, energy and commodities

On the investment side, Steinherr identifies the firm's greatest expertise in artificial intelligence, energy and commodities. Silex currently recommends, for example, profiting from the high volatility of certain names in a diversified way - through managed structured-product mandates. "If you put out convictions like that, of course you have to stand behind them."

In equities, Silex keeps 150 to 200 names from Europe and the US under close watch. The strategies are usually implemented via Actively Managed Certificates (AMCs), which in turn consist of various structured products. For simple long-only equity strategies, it uses AMCs from banks, "but for most multi-asset or structured-product strategies, we use our Luxembourg special purpose vehicle," Steinherr says.

From coupon chasing to a strategic approach

The industry is becoming more transparent, Fotsch says: "The era of products with five fee layers is over." Retrocessions are still an issue in some markets, such as the Middle East and France, "but hardly anymore in German-speaking Switzerland."

The second trend is that structured products are becoming portfolio components that need to be actively managed on an ongoing basis. The opportunistic hunt for a high coupon (or a kickback at quarter-end) has had its day. "Fire and forget" is over, both say. Silex's most important performance metric is therefore the investment success of its active strategies.

The example of a family office

Steinherr gives an example. Using its own Spark tool, he analyzed the structured-product portfolio of a large family office worth more than CHF 100 million, consisting of numerous reverse convertibles. The result showed 80 percent exposure to US tech stocks and 15 percent to European industrial stocks. "The CIO was not fully aware of that."

Together with the client, they developed a more broadly diversified strategy designed to achieve the return target with significantly less concentration risk, lower complexity and lower costs. At each liquidity event, reinvestment is recalculated using the same criteria. The client saves a great deal of time and gets a professionally managed portfolio.

No involvement in the association

Silex is not active in the industry association Swiss Structured Products Association (SSPA), even though it appreciates its work. Under the association's classification, Silex is considered a broker and is therefore excluded from the working groups. "Those would actually be interesting for us," says Steinherr. But the company does maintain periodic contact.

Steinherr knows the association from the inside. As a UBS banker, he sat on its board from 2016 onward, as finews reported; in 2019 he was vice president and at times also president. 

Enthusiastic outlook for 2026

Both are euphoric about the current year. Silex is posting double-digit growth in both revenue and profit. That is also thanks to favorable market conditions. "The conditions in the structured-products industry are so good right now that you almost have to try hard not to post a record year," says Steinherr.

By 2030, Silex wants to double its volume compared with 2025, mainly through geographic expansion. The company is generating a "very positive EBIT," Steinherr says. Everything is always reinvested in growth.

Annual volume of 5 to CHF 6 billion francs

The company's annual structured-products volume is around 5 billion to CHF 6 billion francs. In addition to Zurich, the sales center for German-speaking Switzerland and Asia, Silex is present in Geneva for the Romandie and the Middle East, in Paris for the EU market, and in Monaco for Latin America. A Dubai office is in the works. Switzerland remains the largest market. "We are rooted in wealth management," Fotsch says.

In Switzerland, Silex is primarily looking for people in sales and portfolio management. Cultural fit is crucial. "It's about achieving something together and enjoying the process," says Fotsch.

Sportsmanship and an anniversary

As an example of the sporting spirit at the firm, he points to the Silex Cup in Chamonix, a ski event for clients and employees. Silex also sponsors professional ski racers as part of the SILEX Racing Team.

The company recently celebrated its tenth anniversary at the Carrières des Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence, a former limestone quarry where artworks are projected onto the towering rock walls. The meal was prepared by Emmanuel Renaut, the three-Michelin-star chef of Flocons de Sel in Megève. Success, as the wine rack already showed us, is something to be savored at Silex.