Business Valuation: Multi-Family Offices (MFOs)

The average Swiss multi-family office is valued at 7.5 - 10.0× EBITDA on a statutory (tax-based) basis and 8.0 - 12.0× EBITDA in actual transactions. The spread between statutory and deal multiples represents an arbitrage opportunity for informed buyers. The current market trend is rising, with an arbitrage gap rated as high. In this niche the multiple sits on mandates held by senior advisers and renewed family by family, so the price depends on how many families and generations each relationship spans, how much revenue is recurring rather than project fees, whether the office holds the licence its mandates require, and how many families stay through the handover.

Key valuation drivers include: A licence-backed position a single-family office cannot copy: managing assets for more than one unrelated family requires FINMA authorisation, which exempt single-family offices do not hold (Art. 2 FinIA); A large adjacent client pool: 250-300 Swiss single-family offices managed around CHF 600bn in 2023 (University of St. Gallen/SFOA, cited by zeb 2026). Factors that can compress valuations include: No licence category of its own: "multi-family office" is a business model, so counts of the sector range from 34 to 187 firms depending on the definition; A small population behind the label: ValIndex classifies only 34 of 1,579 operating wealth managers as MFOs, and none in Ticino. Deal multiples typically range from 8.0 - 12.0× EBITDA, but actual prices vary significantly based on customer concentration, management quality, revenue predictability, and geographic reach within Switzerland's 26 cantons.

There is no single answer, because Switzerland has no licence category for multi-family offices. The Financial Institutions Act exempts only persons who manage assets exclusively for people with whom they have economic or family ties (Art. 2 para. 2 lit. a FinIA), so a single-family office needs no licence, while an office managing the assets of several unrelated families must hold a FINMA licence as a portfolio manager or as a manager of collective assets. Counts therefore depend on the definition. ValIndex's June 2026 study classifies 34 of 1,579 operating licensed wealth managers as running a multi-family-office model, 14 in German-speaking Switzerland and 20 in Romandie. FINMA's register of 14 September 2026 lists 41 institutions with "family" in their name — 37 with a portfolio-manager licence and five with a trustee licence, Allina Family Office SA holding both, in Geneva (12), Ticino (11), Zurich (10), Zug (3), Schwyz (3), Lucerne (1) and Bern (1) — plus four FINMA-supervised FinIA group companies in Zurich with family-office names. The commercial directory familyofficehub.io documented 187 MFOs in June 2026. On the exempt side, the University of St. Gallen and the Swiss Single Family Office Association counted 250 to 300 single-family offices with around CHF 600bn in 2023. The ~150 MFOs given in the February 2026 edition of this report had no source.

Succession in a multi-family office runs on two clocks at once: the retirement of the founder and the transfer of wealth inside the client families. The first is measurable. ValIndex's June 2026 study counts 34 firms running a multi-family-office model among 1,579 operating licensed wealth managers, and in FIN21 and WealthSummit's 2026 survey of licensed managers 63% of owners are 51 or older, 25% are over 60 and only 38% have a clearly arranged succession. The second is what makes an MFO different to sell. Its value sits in governance, estate and tax mandates that bind the office to a family rather than to a portfolio, and those mandates are held by named senior advisers; Patrick Stauber of Marcuard Heritage wrote in June 2026 that clients follow the adviser, not the legal form, and that trust transfers over years, not months. The February 2026 edition of this report quoted AuM-based prices of 2-4%, retention guarantees of 85-95% and earn-outs of 30-50% of the price; none could be traced to a source, and they are removed. What the register does show is how the larger houses have organised continuity: NS Partners SA, formerly Notz Stucki & Cie SA, brought its Zurich affiliate and two Geneva companies into one licensed manager of collective assets; Stonehage Fleming SA folded its Geneva company into the Neuchâtel parent; KENDRIS entered new operating companies and a holding in Zug in 2025 and 2026. For smaller offices the realistic routes are a platform or a larger house — 71% of licensed independent managers name consolidation as their most urgent task — and a buyer's first check is the licence: the target must hold the portfolio-manager, collective-assets or trustee authorisation its mandates require. Owners should document which adviser holds each family relationship, which mandates are governance and estate work rather than asset management, and plan several years of joint coverage. Deal multiples for the sector typically run 8.0 - 12.0× EBITDA.

Four trends define the sector in 2026: (1) The label outruns the register — A multi-family office has no licence category of its own, so the number of them depends on who is counting. (2) Six of eight named houses needed correcting — Checked against the commercial register, most of the February 2026 edition's key players had moved, renamed or never existed in the form stated. (3) Bank groups and platforms build family-office units — The FINMA lists show family-office activity inside larger groups as much as in independent houses. (4) Assets are up, earnings are not — The MFO business shares the economics of the licensed independent sector. zeb puts assets managed by Swiss external asset managers at CHF 525bn at the end of 2025, above the CHF 500bn of 2021, while gross profit of CHF 6.0bn remains below the CHF 6.3bn of 2021, with the 50 largest firms earning CHF 3.3bn of it.

The principal acquisition risks are: (1) Banks inside the segment: Julius Bär Family Office & Trust AG holds a trustee licence in Zurich and absorbed Julius Bär Family Office AG; (2) Licence mismatch in due diligence: asset management for several families needs a portfolio-manager or collective-assets licence and trust work a trustee licence — a target's activities must match what it holds; (3) Earnings lag assets: sector gross profit of CHF 6.0bn in 2025 is still below the CHF 6.3bn of 2021 despite higher assets (zeb 2026). Buyers should conduct thorough due diligence on customer concentration, regulatory compliance, and key-person dependencies. Deal multiples of 8.0 - 12.0× EBITDA may be discounted for firms with elevated risk profiles.

An indicative cost split for a Swiss multi-family office is: Personnel (senior family advisers, investment and planning staff, compliance): 55%, Technology & consolidated reporting: 10%, Compliance, legal & supervisory costs: 8%, Office, travel & client meetings: 10%, Business development & networks: 5%, Profit margin (EBITDA): 12%. Indicative split for an independent multi-family office; no published source measures MFO cost structures in Switzerland. The nearest benchmark is PwC's Portfolio Manager Industry 360° view (December 2023), which puts personnel at 60-80% of total expenses for Swiss portfolio managers and other operating costs at 15-25%, plus a recurring CHF 34-54k a year for supervision after licensing. The split above sits inside those ranges, with more weight on travel, governance work and consolidated reporting than a pure asset manager carries. The February 2026 edition's senior compensation of CHF 250-500k and EBITDA margins of 15-20% for larger platforms had no source and are removed. The margin data that exists is sector-wide: FIN21/WealthSummit respondents name personnel (77%), compliance (54%) and IT/cloud (42%) as the costs that move their net margin. For a buyer, the question is which of these costs are tied to named senior advisers — and therefore to the families they serve.

Switzerland's multi-family offices cluster in four regions: (1) Geneva and Romandie (GE/NE) — The largest concentration by every count: 12 of the 41 register entries with a family-office name are in the canton of Geneva, the familyofficehub.io directory lists 58 MFOs in the city, and ValIndex classifies 20 of its 34 MFO-model firms as based in Romandie. (2) Zurich (ZH) — The German-speaking hub and the base of family-office units inside larger groups. (3) Ticino (TI) — Eleven register entries carry a family-office name, seven of them in Lugano, and the directory lists 18 MFOs in the city — yet ValIndex classifies none of Ticino's licensed wealth managers as running a multi-family model. (4) Zug and Schwyz (ZG/SZ) — Six register entries with a family-office name — Aguaverde Family Office SA in Zug, Honestus Family Office AG in Cham and Trianon Family Office AG in Baar, plus three in Schwyz — in Wollerau, Freienbach and Gersau, the last in liquidation. Because the three counts disagree by region as much as in total, a buyer should confirm a target's licence in the FINMA register and its seat in Zefix rather than rely on a directory listing or the firm's name.