1810 on Paper: The Oldest Swiss Wealth Managers, and What the Register Does Not Prove

The oldest firm on FINMA’s list of licensed portfolio managers dates itself to 1810. It says so on its homepage, in its tagline, and in a partner’s pull quote: «Viele kommen und gehen, wir bleiben. Seit 1810.» All of it is true. None of it, however, means the firm has managed client money since 1810. By its own account, that business started in 2005 — which is why any honest list of the oldest Swiss wealth managers has to start somewhere else.

At first, I set out to write a simple list of the oldest Swiss wealth managers in the country. It turned into something more useful, because the simple list is not true.

Three filters on the oldest Swiss wealth managers

I started with all 1,358 firms on the FINMA list of licensed portfolio managers and their commercial-register entry dates. Seventy-five entered the register before 1990. Then I applied two more filters, and both of them did real damage.

Filter two: a website of its own

Does the firm have a website at all? In fact, several of the oldest do not. Anthos Swiss Service Office AG (1953), Jamalco SA (1959), Hofag AG (1961) and Thalopat AG (1963) have no site of their own; for most of them the only trace online is a registry aggregator. This filter is also the one that caught me out. However, my first pass matched company names against domain names and missed four firms that have perfectly good websites: Ehinger & Cie. is at ehico.ch, Sagefor is at sagefor.ch, Univest is at univest.ch, FINAD is at finad.com. What found them in the end was the e-mail address in the phone-book listing and a search on the registered street address, not the company name. Therefore, I rechecked the whole list by hand.

Filter three: the firm’s own claim

Does the firm itself claim to have been a wealth manager that long? This is where the list fell apart, and the 1810 firm is the clearest case. Ehinger & Cie. in Basel was founded, for instance, in 1810 as a trading, shipping and banking house. In 1974 the banking business moved into a separate company, Bank Ehinger & Cie. AG, and continued as a subsidiary of the Schweizerischer Bankverein. What kept the name became a wealth manager only when Robert Ehinger Krehl turned it, in the words of its own history page, into “eine erstklassige Adresse für Vermögensverwaltung” — in 2005. Similarly, a reader pointed me to Rüetschi Zehnder AG, in the commercial register since 1947, whose site says “seit über 25 Jahren sind wir als unabhängige Vermögensverwalter aktiv” and dates the firm itself to 1996. Both companies are genuinely old. Neither wealth manager is.

What survives all three filters, then, is this shortlist of the oldest Swiss wealth managers.

operating as a wealth manager company registered, but not yet a wealth manager

Twelve firms. Three of them — Sagefor, Univest and FINAD — are on this list only because I went back and checked by hand what the first pass had thrown out.

The oldest Swiss wealth managers, in their own words

What each firm says, in its own words:

• Sagefor SA de Gérance de Fortunes — “Sagefor a été fondée en 1936 avec comme activité la gestion patrimoniale et plus particulièrement la gestion de fortune.”
• «Commercial» Treuhand- und Verwaltungs AG — “Seit 1946 werden bei der Commercial Treuhand- und Verwaltungs AG Vermögenswerte von einer anspruchsvollen, nationalen und internationalen Kundschaft betreut.”
• Univest AG — “1957 wurde Univest in Basel-Stadt gegründet”; “Als langjähriges Single Family Office haben wir bei unserer Inhaberfamilie sowie unserer privaten und institutionellen Kundschaft seit 1957 Vertrauen aufgebaut und Kontinuität bewiesen.”
• FINAD AG — “seit der Gründung im Jahr 1976”
• Ebfinanz AG — “Beständigkeit seit 1978” / “Anlegen mit Instinkt. Seit 1978.”
• Renalco SA — “Founded in Geneva in 1979, Renalco is a privately held, FINMA-authorised wealth manager…”
• Zuri-Invest AG — “Established in 1980, Zuri-Invest AG has consistently pursued its asset management and multi-family office activities over more than four decades.”
• Triaxis AG — “Since our foundation in 1983, Triaxis AG specialise in asset management and investment consulting.”
• Coges Corraterie Gestion SA — “Gestion de fortune à Genève depuis 1984.”
• Rhône Gestion SA — “Une histoire de familles depuis 1984.”
• Treuco AG — “1987 Treuco branches out into the field of asset management.”
• WHVP AG — “Preserving legacies since 1991”; the founder’s biography: “In 1991 Rob co-founded the firm Weber Hartmann Vrijhof & Partners Ltd.”

Where the register year and the business part ways

First, look at the two year columns. For most of this list they are the same, because the company was incorporated to do this job. For two of them, by contrast, they are decades apart.

Treuco was founded in 1974 by Dr. Marcel Studer as a trust and legal services firm. Indeed, its own company history is admirably precise: “1987 Treuco branches out into the field of asset management.” In other words, thirteen years of the company’s life happened before the business we are counting existed.

WHVP, meanwhile, is the sharper case. The legal entity dates from 15 August 1972. It has been called Weber Hartmann Vrijhof & Partners AG, and before that Weber H.C. & Partners AG, and originally Garamend Holding AG; the short name WHVP AG entered the register only in July 2026. Yet the firm itself makes no claim on 1972. Its site says “since 1991”, and the founder’s biography says he co-founded it in 1991. In short, the 1972 in the register belongs to a holding company, not to a wealth manager.

At the other end of the table, the two oldest firms make the full claim without a gap. Sagefor was incorporated in Geneva on 16 September 1936 under a name that states the business outright — Société Anonyme de Gérance de Fortunes — and its own site dates the activity to the same year. «Commercial» Treuhand- und Verwaltungs AG came out of a law firm in 1946: Dr. Lothar Dessauer founded it, his son took it over in 1973, and a long-serving employee acquired the share majority in 2006. Ninety years and eighty years, one continuous business each, stated plainly.

Why I am making a fuss about a date

Because heritage is a sales argument in this industry, and it is the one argument nobody else can copy. “Since 1946” on a pitch book does real work in a first meeting.

Moreover, it is trivially easy to say things with it that are true and misleading at the same time. For example, a house founded in 1810 that took up wealth management in 2005 can print “seit 1810” on everything it owns, and nothing about that is false. A dormant company from the 1920s that someone bought and repurposed in 2016 would have topped my original list and would have been the most impressive name on it.

Ultimately, the test that separates the oldest Swiss wealth managers from merely old companies is not the commercial register. It is whether the firm will tell you, in its own words and on its own site, since when it has actually done this. All in all, twelve firms out of 1,358 pass that test back to before 1990.

The ones that did not make it

Seventy-five firms were old enough on paper to be candidates for the oldest Swiss wealth managers. Twelve of them say, on their own site, that they have done this work since before 1990. The other sixty-three fell out on one of the two filters above, and these are the ones worth naming.

No website of their own: Anthos Swiss Service Office AG (1953), Jamalco SA (1959), Hofag AG (1961) and Thalopat AG (1963), which now presents itself as a property company. Ellis AG (1904) has a domain of its own, ellisag.ch — its phone-book entry uses an e-mail address there — but the site does not load, over neither HTTP nor HTTPS. Two look-alike domains, ellis-ag.com and ellis-ag.net, do load; both are fraudulent fixed-deposit sites misusing the registered company’s identity, and FINMA and BaFin have warned about them.

Old companies, but not the oldest Swiss wealth managers

A website, but a claim that does not reach back: Ehinger & Cie. (1810, wealth management since 2005), Rüetschi Zehnder AG (1947, dates itself to 1996), Vivainvest AG (1980, which makes no claim at all on its site) and Moning Wealth Management AG (1981, “seit mehr als 20 Jahren”). Adelga AG (1971) I could not place: I found no site the company itself appears to operate. And SC Studio Consulenze SA (1977) blocks automated retrieval, so I could not check it at all; it may well belong on the list.