Swiss Structured Products Boutique Eyes Asia as No. 2 Market
Adrian Steinherr has served clients in Singapore for three years without a local office. Now the managing partner of Swiss structured products specialist Silex wants Asia to become the firm's second-largest market by 2030.
Anyone entering the Zurich office of Silex first notices a shelf on the wall. Lined up on it: empty wine bottles, many of them exclusive vintages from around the world.
“A matter of taste – some love it, others less so,” says managing partner Adrian Steinherr. The firm's partners are great wine lovers, he explains. Steinherr, who is in charge of Silex's expansion in Asia, travels to the region regularly – next time at the end of November for a week.
Asia as the Strongest Growth Story
“Three years ago, we started serving clients in Singapore. Today, Asia is our strongest growth story at Silex – and that without a local presence,” Steinherr says. “My ambition is for the region to be our second-largest market in 2030.”
For him, the expansion is also personal. “Asia has always held special meaning for me. I have travelled there regularly since childhood and remain fascinated by its cultural diversity, its architecture, its thousands of years of history and, not least, its cuisine,” he says. “Being able to combine this personal passion with my professional work is a nice side effect.”
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. Soon, however, clients asked whether Silex could take over the entire management of their assets.
“We did not want to become a wealth 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 sold its Geneva bond fund business, comprising four funds, to Axiom Alternative Investments two years ago.
Derivatives DNA
The focus on structured products came naturally, as many of the team come from the derivatives business. Steinherr has led Silex in Zurich since 2020. Before that, he spent nine years as managing director at UBS's investment bank in Zurich, responsible for the derivatives business. Earlier, he worked in London for Citigroup, Nomura, Lehman Brothers and Commerzbank.
Yet Silex has little in common with a classic broker. “Mainly, we structure our own market convictions,” Steinherr says. The firm rests on two pillars: a human one, with research, convictions and sales, and a technological one.
“Nothing Outsourced”
Of its more than 100 employees, only about 30 work in sales. The rest work on the investment side and in downstream processes, 13 of them in technology alone. “We have outsourced nothing at all,” Steinherr says. The average age is 35, with a narrow spread – relatively high for the industry. Clients, the firm argues, need experienced and knowledgeable counterparts they can trust.
On the technology side, Silex relies on its own systems, such as the Spark platform. Among other things, it gives clients real-time reporting on their structured products, including those bought from other providers. API connections to 26 issuers fetch prices automatically and in real time.
Focus on AI, Energy and Commodities
On the investment side, Steinherr locates the firm's greatest expertise in artificial intelligence, energy and commodities. Silex currently recommends, for example, benefiting from the high volatility of certain stocks in a diversified way – through managed structured product mandates. “When you go out with such convictions, you have to stand by them, of course.”
Silex closely monitors 150 to 200 equities from Europe and the US. Strategies are mostly implemented through actively managed certificates (AMCs), which in turn consist of various structured products. For simple long-only equity strategies, Silex uses bank-issued AMCs, “but for most multi-asset or structured product strategies, our Luxembourg special purpose vehicle,” Steinherr says.
Family Offices and EAMs in Focus
In Asia, as in its other markets, Silex focuses exclusively on professional wealth managers, in particular family offices and external asset managers. “What impresses in Asia is not only the sheer number of these market participants, but also the dynamism with which the segment is developing,” Steinherr says. “For a specialised provider like Silex, that opens up considerable opportunities.”
The firm does not intend to compete across the board. “Of course trading volumes in Asia are enormous, and the temptation to play everywhere is great. But we stay true to our DNA: asset management, clear convictions and structured products as the instrument of implementation,” he says. “Better to be really good in a few areas than to be a little involved everywhere.”
The End of “Fire and Forget”
According to Silex, the industry is becoming more transparent, and the era of products with multiple fee layers is over. Retrocessions remain an issue in some markets, such as the Middle East and France, but hardly at all in German-speaking Switzerland.
The second trend: structured products are becoming a portfolio component that needs ongoing management. The opportunistic hunt for a high coupon – or a kickback at quarter-end – has had its day. “Fire and forget” is over. Silex's most important performance indicator is therefore the investment success of its active strategies.
Concentrated Bets on US Tech
In Asia, too, yield enhancement products dominate the market for structured investments. Steinherr sees two particular features. “First, products are often structured with very early and frequent autocall dates. This can increase the annualised return in the event of early redemption and at the same time generates correspondingly high transaction volumes.”
“Second, the selection of underlyings is strikingly concentrated: US technology stocks dominate, in particular the well-known mega-caps such as Nvidia, Meta or Alphabet.”
This is where Silex sees a key value of its Managed Structured Product AMCs (MSPAs). “Many clients deliberately entrust us with part of their structured products allocation so that we diversify it more broadly and systematically – across regions, sectors and individual stocks,” Steinherr says. “Even if several different products sit in a portfolio, that is far from diversification if, in the end, the same three stocks determine the risk everywhere.”
The Example of a Family Office
Steinherr cites an example from Switzerland. Using the in-house Spark tool, he analysed the structured products portfolio of a large family office worth more than 100 million Swiss francs, consisting of numerous reverse convertibles. The result: an exposure of 80 percent to US tech stocks and 15 percent to European industrials. “The CIO was not really aware of that.”
Together with the client, Silex developed a more broadly diversified strategy designed to reach the return target with significantly less concentration risk, lower complexity and lower costs. At every liquidity event, reinvestment is recalculated according to the same criteria. The client saves a lot of time and gets a professionally managed portfolio.
A Record Year
Steinherr is euphoric about the current year. Silex is recording double-digit growth in both revenue and profit, helped by a favourable market. “Conditions in the structured products industry are currently so good that you almost have to make an effort not to achieve a record year,” he says.
By 2030, Silex aims to double its volume compared with 2025, mainly through geographic expansion. The firm reports a “very positive EBIT,” Steinherr says. Everything is reinvested in growth. Silex puts its annual structured products volume at around 5 to 6 billion Swiss francs.
Dubai First, Then Singapore?
Besides Zurich, its sales hub for German-speaking Switzerland and Asia, Silex is present in Geneva for French-speaking Switzerland and the Middle East, in Paris for the EU market, and in Monaco for Latin America. Switzerland remains the largest market.
The next step is set: “An office in Dubai is planned for 2027. At the same time, we are also examining our own presence in Singapore in the medium term,” Steinherr says. “Singapore has quickly become one of our most important growth markets. Being physically present there one day would be a logical next step for Silex – and a particularly nice milestone for me personally.”
Sporting Spirit and an Anniversary
Silex cultivates a sporting spirit, for instance with the Silex Cup in Chamonix, a ski event for clients and employees. The firm also sponsors professional skiers through the Silex Racing Team.
It recently celebrated its tenth anniversary at the Carrières des Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence, a former limestone quarry where artworks are projected onto towering rock walls. The food came from Emmanuel Renaut, three-star chef at Flocons de Sel in Megève. Success, as the wine shelf had already shown, is there to be savoured at Silex.
