Amid renewed conflict and a new energy and supply chain shock, sustainability struggles to remain on the boardroom agenda. Yet, businesses in Switzerland have the potential to capture sustainability value in the millions – and in some cases billions – of francs. Deploying a Sustainability Value Proposition is the way forward.
The Middle East conflict puts fresh emphasis on supply chain resilience and the need to adopt renewables as a way to enhance energy security, underpinning decarbonisation investments as a way to contain costs. Meanwhile, the race to implement articificial intelligence raises new trade offs for companies, considering AI’s vast environmental, social and ethical impacts.
But opportunities lie in turning investments in sustainable practices into benefits for customers, underpinning commercial positioning and boosting competitive advantage.
We have estimated the untapped value for major Swiss comapanies arising from sustainability efforts in terms of potential stock market upside: the value they could capture by converting their sustainability performance into financial returns. We measured this gap as totalling CHF 65 billion in potential sustainablity value for the 20 members of the benchmark SMI index.
Upside for Swiss companies
This positive result shows sustainability is not the regulatory or compliance cost it is often accused of being but a strategic asset for value creation. We also find that this value lies in a broad range of industries, meaning monetizing sustainability is something for many companies, not just niche sectors or businesses exposed to the burgeoning energy transition.
According to our analysis, 19 of the 20 companies in Switzerland’s leading index trade at a discount relative to their sustainability-adjusted potential – the value these companies should have if their environmental, social and governance (ESG) efforts were fully accounted for (newly listed Amrize is the exception since it is too early to measure its ESG performance since its spin-off from Holcim at end-2025). Novartis stands out as the SMI member with the biggest hidden sustainability premium – both in absolute terms (CHF 15.2 billion) and relative to its standard market capitalisation (6.8%). Other large cap Swiss companies also have considerable unpriced sustainability value including Roche (CHF 12.6 billion, or 4.5%), UBS (CHF 7.8 billion or 6.4%). Nestlé and ABB stand out too with billions at stake (see table).
Time to close the gap
How to thrive in the new, commercial phase of sustainbility’s evolution? One thing is clear: developing a Sustainability Value Proposition (SVP) forces the focus on customers – the “forgotten” stakeholder. Companies need to offer and communicate credibly the environmental and social benefits of their products and services, the sustainability they enable for customers. They need to be more effective at explaining to a range of stakeholders – from investors to employees – how sustainability action creates opportunity and value for the business instead of focusing on managing risk.
To support companies, we’ve launched a tailored SVP service offering in three steps: Explore, Capture and then Deploy a Sustainability Value Proposition.
Monetizing sustainability
whitepaper 2026
“The last decade was about reporting virtue; the next one will be about creating and showing value“
Sasja Beslik, Senior advisor, Lundquist
Contact us
For further details about the research and to order your SVP Readiness Report or SVP benchmark, write to:
