Beny Ruhstaller had been planning his resignation for a long time: “It was important to me not to leave at the drop of a hat, but to prepare my succession well,” explained the outgoing president at the SVSM’s general assembly, which took place in the atmospheric garden room of Villa Boveri in Baden. Ruhstaller shaped the umbrella organisation of Swiss location and business development agencies as president for eight years, and he had already been a member of the board since 2013. But he had his first contact with the SVSM much earlier, as he recalled in his review at the general assembly: “I was able to accept the first SVSM award for innovative projects in location management in 2007: for my mandate as managing director of the Glattpark area marketing.” As luck would have it, he also resigned from this very mandate these days after 21 years as managing director.
Linking real estate and locations
Beny Ruhstaller is not a classic location promoter. Rather, he has represented the viewpoint of the real estate industry in the association by sitting on the board of the SVSM and, from 2015, as president. It has always been his concern to bring the real estate industry and location promotion closer together. He has succeeded in this in various ways, for example in the area of membership structure or within the framework of a cooperation with the magazine “immo!nvest”. Furthermore, under Ruhstaller’s presidency, a guided visit day to Expo Real, Europe’s largest trade fair for real estate and locations in Munich, took place several times and at the beginning of this year the SVSM participated for the first time in Immo23, the Swiss trade fair for real estate investments. Ruhstaller also always placed a lot of emphasis on the “Swiss” in the association’s name, for example with a balanced regional representation on the board or events at changing locations. The professionalisation of the sector in the sense of a well-founded education and training offer was another concern of Ruhstaller’s: he was not only active himself as a speaker in various courses, but also active in the development of new offers. During the Corona pandemic, he also succeeded in developing new event formats together with a committed board team and making the association fit for the future.
Remo Daguati elected new President
The General Assembly in Baden unanimously elected Remo Daguati, a member of the SVSM Board since 2021 and Vice-President since 2022, as the new President of the SVSM. Remo Daguati is the owner of LOC AG in Zurich and looks after location promotion organisations and site developments throughout the DACH region. Before becoming self-employed, he was in charge of national location promotion (Invest in Switzerland) as a member of the management board of Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) until the beginning of 2016. Stefan Otziger, SVSM board member since 2018 and managing director of the Thun economic region, was elected as vice president. During the general assembly, the outgoing president Ruhstaller was also able to introduce a new sponsor: Mettler2Invest, an owner-managed, independent real estate development company, supports the SVSM in addition to the previous sponsors Sunrise and EKZ. Without the valuable support of its sponsors, the SVSM would not be able to maintain its current range of services – so a big thank you at this point.
Input presentations on site development and vacancy management
Following the general meeting, the participants were treated to two practical input presentations on the topics of site development and vacancy management as part of the hybrid specialist event “SVSM Dialogue on Site Management”: Verena Rohrer, Head of Aargau Services Location Promotion, addressed the question of whether large-scale settlements such as that of the pharmaceutical supplier Bachem on the Sisslerfeld are a consequence of cantonal site development – and came to an “indirect yes” as an answer. Majid Parente, managing director and founder of collektiv AG, showed other ways of dealing with vacant commercial properties in city centres: by including and understanding the location and the property, carrying out an in-depth analysis and pursuing a participatory approach.
