Zurich Research Desk
Long-form research, macro outlooks and private-market commentary produced by Sterling & Alpine's investment, credit and wealth-advisory teams for our private banking clients worldwide.
A multi-polar world is rewriting the correlation playbook. As reserve diversification accelerates and industrial policy returns to the West, capital flows are fragmenting along strategic lines rather than yield curves.
Europe's EUR 800 billion re-industrialisation programme is opening the largest inflation-linked, cash-yielding opportunity set of the decade — but access, structuring and vintage discipline decide the outcome.
Bitcoin has crossed the institutional threshold. ETF flows, sovereign accumulation and Basel-compliant custody frameworks now make a measured allocation defensible in almost every private-wealth mandate.
The first genuinely investable yield curve in fifteen years has arrived. For patient capital, laddered high-grade bonds now deliver equity-like real returns without equity-like drawdowns.
ESG scoring has lost credibility. The next generation of sustainable investing is materiality-based, sector-specific and grounded in double-materiality disclosures — not aggregated third-party ratings.
USD 84 trillion will change hands over the next two decades. Families that thrive across generations govern their capital — those that don't, consume it.
China's post-property economy is coming into focus: manufacturing dominance, targeted stimulus and a strategic export pivot are producing a slower but more balanced growth model with global consequences.
Private credit is now a USD 1.7 trillion asset class. As spreads compress and covenants weaken, manager selection and structural discipline separate income from principal loss.
In an era of fiscal expansion and monetary experimentation, the Swiss franc's structural role as a wealth-preservation asset has quietly strengthened.
