Deloitte Private launched to serve growing market of family businesses, family offices and private equity firms

Switzerland is a globally unique market for privately owned organisations: rich in family-owned businesses, it also has a strong heritage of family offices and high net worth individuals (HNWI), and the private equity (PE) segment is growing in size and significance. To better address the needs of the private sector, Deloitte Switzerland has launched Deloitte Private – a dedicated practice that provides integrated advisory and assurance services to private entities. Deloitte Private advises family and privately-owned businesses, family offices and HNWI, and PE firms along their life cycle – helping them to grow, comply and report, and counter risks in an increasingly complex, global and digital business world. Karine Szegedi heads the Deloitte Private practice in Switzerland and has joined Deloitte Switzerland’s Executive team.

In recent years, globalisation and digitisation have disrupted the environment in which many organisations operate. This is the case not only for large multinational, listed organisations, but also for family businesses and other privately held companies – a sector of growing importance in the global markets. Like multinational firms, private entities have an increasing global footprint and have to deal with increasingly complex, cross-border regulatory frameworks. As Deloitte’s study Private company global considerations for 2019 highlights, the growing connectivity of business interactions today is both a source of disruption and an opportunity for private companies to do some disrupting of their own.

“We see an increasing demand from privately owned businesses for advice to tackle their most complex challenges: from finding new ways to grow and embracing digitisation in their work and to transform their businesses, to remaining compliant within a fast-changing and increasingly complex cross-border tax and regulatory environment and countering omnipresent risks such as cyber-attacks. Private organisations need more than ever trusted and experienced advisors that cover various disciplines and that offer globally integrated solutions with a local touch,” says Karine Szegedi, Managing Partner for Deloitte Private in Switzerland.

To address these needs, Deloitte has launched Deloitte Private in Switzerland – joining other Deloitte geographies including Belgium, Luxembourg and the UK. Karine Szegedi heads the Deloitte Private practice in Switzerland and has also joined Deloitte Switzerland’s Executive team.

The dedicated practice provides integrated advisory services to privately owned businesses. On average, family offices in Switzerland work with around 20 different advisors, from tax and M&A advisors to banks and succession planning specialists. Deloitte Private offers the single-point of access that the decision-makers of family businesses and privately-owned companies strive for. Also, private businesses can profit from Deloitte’s local know-how in tax, M&A, business transformation, assurance and risk management combined with the unmatched scope of its global network. Deloitte brings into every interaction with its clients a unique and trusted business advisor skill-set, supported by relevant events and insights.

“Deloitte is known for helping large companies solving their largest challenges, whether it’s transforming their business through growth strategies and digitisation or helping to manage regulatory and cyber risks. Smaller and bigger family businesses as well as family offices face similar challenges – and that’s where we can build on our experience and breadth of advisory services to help. We already work for a number of privately owned organisations and aim to expand our network in the Swiss market in the years to come,” says Karine Szegedi, adding that, “We strive to keep the personal ambition of business owners at the heart of everything we do.”