Cambridge Associates has acquired Siglo Capital Advisors, a Zurich-based firm that invests in alternatives on behalf of pensions and other institutional clients in Switzerland.
The acquisition gives Boston-based Cambridge Associates its first office in Switzerland, where banking privacy and favorable taxes have traditionally made the country a hub for attracting foreign wealth.
“We used to see when families get to a certain size, they would build their own investment side and run it off their family office platform,” Cambridge Associates CEO David Druley told Crain Currency. “The last five years we’ve seen a distinct change in trend to where many family offices are outsourcing the investing function but creating all the other infrastructure of their family office.”
Siglo was founded in 2010 and focuses on insurance-linked securities, private credit, hedge funds and impact investing. Siglo’s Swiss clients can now access Cambridge’s global platform for private equity and venture capital investing backed by its team of 300 senior staff investors.
“The thing that is different in the Swiss pension system versus the UK and the U.S. corporate system is that the UK and the U.S. corporate defined-benefit plans is a shrinking market due to the corporations trying to get out of the pension business or offloading their liabilities. They’re terminating plans,” said Druley. “In Switzerland, the market is actually growing, which is quite different from two of the other largest pension markets in the world, the U.S. and the UK.”
Cambridge Associates was founded in 1973 and has 12 offices including Arlington, Virginia; Beijing; Dallas; Hong Kong; London; Munich; New York; San Francisco; Singapore; and Sydney.