When I founded Dryden Associates in Geneva in 2008, the brief was straightforward: help international companies navigate Switzerland. Accounting, tax, compliance — the essentials that every business needs when it arrives in a new jurisdiction and needs to get things right from the outset.
What I did not foresee was how closely our own development would follow our clients’ journeys.
As those early clients established themselves and began to grow their teams, they needed payroll. Swiss payroll is not straightforward — the social security obligations, the permit requirements, the cantonal variations — and they needed advisers who understood it as thoroughly as they understood the accounting. In 2018 we acquired ICS Corporate Services, a specialist payroll operation founded in 1999, and brought that capability fully in-house. It was a logical step, but more than that, our clients were asking for it.
Then came the harder conversations. International companies restructure. Markets change, strategies shift, and people who were central to one phase of a business sometimes find themselves facing an uncertain next chapter. Our clients — people who trusted us with their finances and their operations — began asking whether we could help with that too. In 2020 we brought Von Rohr & Associates into the group. Founded in 1993, Von Rohr has spent more than thirty years helping senior professionals navigate career transitions in Switzerland. It was the right firm, at the right moment, for the right reason.
More recently, we recognised a gap that a number of our clients kept encountering: the period between deciding to operate in Switzerland and completing the incorporation of a legal entity. That process can take several months, during which companies cannot legally employ staff. DGT Partners was established to address precisely that situation — providing an employment service that allows international groups to begin operations from day one, before their Swiss entity exists.
A group that supports the full lifecycle of an international company in Switzerland.
DGT Partners bridges the entry period — acting as temporary employer while your Swiss entity is being incorporated.
Dryden ICS manages the ongoing requirements — accounting, tax, payroll, audit and corporate advisory for your Swiss operation.
Von Rohr & Associates supports the human dimension of change — outplacement and career transition when your organisation needs to restructure.
No other firm in Geneva offers all three. We did not set out to build it this way. We built it because our clients needed it.
Nick Dryden, Managing Partner
Dryden Group, Geneva
