Our strategy
For more than 25 years, Swiss Prime Site has been synonymous with the creation and design of living, working and leisure spaces. Today we are the leading real estate company in Switzerland, with the experience and size to facilitate a more sustainable and value-driven use of buildings in the future.
Our extensive experience in property development and letting has resulted in enduring relationships with our tenants and partners. It forms the foundation for our detailed understanding of market needs, both now and in the future, and gives us the ability to anticipate and shape trends.
We have around CHF 28 billion in property assets, and this scale gives us a decisive advantage in extensively leveraging our experience and expertise. Our size means we can drive innovation in construction and building operations, develop large sites, offer a wide range of products and solutions, and set standards for sustainable buildings. Through our actions, we create long-term, sustainable value for our customers and society as a whole.
Our aim is to use our expertise as widely as possible – which is why we have created a platform that allows us to invest both equity and external funds in property. Our strategy is based on two strong pillars: on the one hand, the «Real Estate» business area, where we invest our own funds in commercial real estate, and on the other, the «Asset Management» business area, where we invest external funds from investors in residential real estate, in particular. Our size offers us advantages over other market players, and we serve a very wide range of investors and clients. Our specialist expertise in active portfolio management, in development and in sustainability can be applied across our entire portfolio to realise synergies. We also benefit from economies of scale in centralised functions such as finance and IT.
Real Estate business area
The Real Estate business area, which is consolidated into Swiss Prime Site Immobilien, lets and invests in commercial properties, chiefly in prime locations in the major Swiss economic centres of Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Berne. The real estate holdings are currently valued at around CHF 14 billion and have a broad range of usage types. The largest share is office properties, followed by sales, logistics, infrastructure properties and other types of use.
We mainly invest in larger buildings and sites in central locations, where we cater to a very broad range of tenants through mixed usage. Our tenant base, consisting of around 2 000 individual tenants, is highly diverse, and the concentration of properties and sites allows for efficient management of the portfolio.
By continuously implementing new development projects, tailored to each market, we can simultaneously generate added value for our stakeholders on-site and for our investors. This ensures that our portfolio always meets modern standards and boasts particularly high build quality. To minimise risks, we only develop real estate for our own portfolio, work together with general contractors, and start constructing new developments only when pre-letting reaches at least 50%.
We manage our portfolio proactively and have a solid equity base. This means that we mainly finance our growth through our own funds and make purchases and divestments where they improve the portfolio. Our key evaluation criteria are the potential for returns and value, location, and type of use. Under our disciplined investment strategy we also sell properties of limited potential that do not make an optimal fit for the portfolio as a whole. Overall, we aim to finance our developments and purchases through sales so that we always have a strong equity base. We call this strategy «capital recycling».
Asset Management business area
The Asset Management business area, which is consolidated into Swiss Prime Site Solutions, has managed assets of CHF 14.3 billion and a development pipeline of CHF 1.9 billion. Swiss Prime Site Solutions is the leading independent asset manager in Switzerland, with a fund management licence from the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA).
Our product range comprises (1) varied fund solutions – open-ended and closed-end funds – with differentiated investment strategies, (2) mandates in the form of investment foundations or other legal forms geared towards pension funds, and (3) a range of consultancy solutions for external investors. The managed portfolio, with a diversified investment allocation focusing on residential properties, covers the whole of Switzerland and selected international locations.
Through our wide range of products and services, we cater to various investor types and their preferences. The primary external sources of capital are institutional investors and pension funds. The Asset Management business area generates profitable growth through fee-based revenues without the need for us to invest our own capital.
We provide comprehensive real estate services in this business area too, covering the entire real estate life cycle, from purchasing and development through to letting, property management and sale.
The products are largely invested in residential real estate. For pension funds, the risk-return profile makes this a favoured category. In contrast to the Real Estate business area, we also develop and acquire properties located outside the major economic hubs, where potential income can be particularly attractive.
In recent years, we have focused Swiss Prime Site’s business activities on our core business of real estate investments. We have sold off the areas that are not related to our core business. For example, in 2020 we sold the Tertianum Group, which specialises in assisted living, and in 2023 Wincasa, which focuses on property management. Operations at the Jelmoli department store ended in February 2025, and the building is currently being modified and repositioned for external letting of office and retail space.
Sustainability
Sustainability has been an integral part of our strategy and key to our business and value creation model since the early years of Swiss Prime Site. Our vision is to create sustainable environments. We believe that only buildings that can be built and operated sustainably will have a future. As a real estate company we can make a significant contribution to mitigating climate change and we are aware of this responsibility. Our key priority here is sustainable construction, development and usage, and sustainable operations. In both areas, we have set clear, ambitious goals – for example, using more than 50% renewable resources in construction by 2030, and achieving climate-neutral operations by 2040. Our dedicated employees strive every day to systematically implement the necessary measures.
We regularly validate and calibrate our sustainability strategy with a materiality analysis in which all our stakeholders are involved. The main issues here likewise span the social, economic and governance dimensions, and we take a specific, targeted approach in each case.
We provide comprehensive information about our sustainability strategy, progress, and achievements in our Sustainability Report.
Financing strategy
Real estate is a capital-intensive business, so strong levels of financing are essential for our operational activities. Our focus here is on achieving a high degree of flexibility, minimising risks, optimising costs, while also focusing on sustainability.
Our approach is:
- to keep debt ratios low
- to have a high share of unencumbered real estate
- to have high liquidity reserves
- to have a wide range of financing sources
- to fully link long-term financing to the sustainable use of funds
We aim to be an appealing prospect for our investors, and payment of ongoing dividends is one way we achieve this. Our dividend policy provides for the annual payment of dividends equal to 80–90% of our operating cash flow (as measured using the FFO I metric), with the aim of maintaining or improving their absolute level.