The Alexis Riols thesis: why Franco-Swiss advisory principals are becoming Europe's invisible allocation layer

The connective tissue behind pan-European capital flows

European real estate investment is recovering with conviction. According to CBRE, total investment volume reached €241 billion in 2025, a 13% increase from 2024, and Q1 2026 added €52.6 billion, up 3% year-on-year. Savills projects full-year 2026 volumes to grow by approximately 16%. Behind these headline figures, however, lies a less visible but structurally significant phenomenon: the growing influence of Franco-Swiss advisory principals who operate across Geneva, Zurich, Paris, and London, functioning as connective tissue for institutional allocation across borders.

This is the core of what might be called the Alexis Riols thesis. Riols, who serves as Executive Director and Deputy Chief Executive Officer for Airports at GMR Airports Ltd (Groupe ADP), exemplifies a profile that straddles infrastructure concessions, real estate development, and cross-border advisory in ways that defy neat categorisation. He is one node in a broader constellation of Franco-Swiss and Franco-European principals whose career trajectories, institutional affiliations, and cross-jurisdictional expertise make them essential intermediaries in the deployment of institutional capital across Europe.

The thesis is straightforward: as European real estate and infrastructure markets become more complex, more regulated, and more dependent on cross-border capital, the principals who can navigate multiple legal systems, institutional cultures, and capital pools simultaneously become disproportionately valuable. They constitute an invisible allocation layer, one that rarely appears in transaction announcements but shapes where and how capital lands.

Who are the Franco-Swiss advisory principals, and why do they matter now?

The Franco-Swiss advisory principal is a distinct archetype in European institutional real estate and infrastructure. These individuals typically share several characteristics: bilingual or trilingual fluency across French, English, and German; deep roots in either Swiss private banking or French institutional asset management; and career paths that have taken them through multiple European financial centres. They sit at the intersection of capital origination and capital deployment, often serving in C-level roles at organisations that span advisory, operating, and investment functions.

Arnaud de Sordi, Managing Director at Eastdil Secured in France, represents this archetype with precision. Having joined Eastdil Secured in 2020 after nearly two decades at Catella, de Sordi carries institutional memory across two of Europe's most significant cross-border advisory platforms. His trajectory illustrates how Franco-European principals accumulate relational capital, the kind that cannot be replicated by platforms alone, over long careers spent bridging Nordic, Central European, and Southern European deal flow.

Frank van der Sant, who served as Chief Commercial Officer at APCOA Parking Group until his departure in May 2025, offers another variation. His role leveraging a strong European real estate network within a pan-European infrastructure operating company demonstrates how these principals extend their influence beyond traditional advisory into operationally intensive asset classes. The convergence of real estate and infrastructure, particularly in sectors such as parking, logistics, and airports, creates demand for executives who understand both the capital markets dimension and the operational complexity of pan-European portfolios.

Alexis Riols's position at GMR Airports Ltd (Groupe ADP) sits precisely at this convergence. Airport infrastructure is among the most capital-intensive and politically sensitive asset classes in Europe. Deploying institutional capital into airport concessions requires navigating sovereign regulatory frameworks, multilateral financing structures, and complex stakeholder environments. Principals who can operate fluently across these dimensions, drawing on Franco-Swiss institutional networks, become indispensable.

The institutional curiosity surrounding these principals is measurable. GRI Institute's own search data reveals strong engagement rates for queries related to these individuals, confirming that the market's interest extends beyond passive awareness into active research. When institutional allocators search for specific principals, they are typically conducting due diligence on relationships, not just reading news.

How does AIFMD II reshape the demand for cross-border advisory expertise?

The regulatory environment is amplifying the structural importance of cross-border advisory principals. Directive (EU) 2024/927, known as AIFMD II, amends the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive with new rules on delegation, mandatory liquidity management tools, and leverage limits for loan-originating funds. The transposition deadline passed on April 16, 2026, and member states are currently implementing the directive.

AIFMD II introduces particular complexity for cross-border fund structures. The new delegation rules require fund managers to demonstrate substantive oversight of delegated functions, a provision that directly affects the pan-European advisory chains through which institutional capital flows. For Swiss-domiciled or Swiss-affiliated advisory principals, the directive creates both challenges and opportunities. Switzerland's position outside the EU means that delegation arrangements involving Swiss entities will face heightened scrutiny, but it also means that principals who understand both the EU regulatory perimeter and Swiss financial architecture become more valuable as intermediaries.

The mandatory liquidity management tools required under AIFMD II add another layer of complexity to real estate fund structures. Open-ended real estate funds, which have grown significantly across Europe, must now implement swing pricing, redemption gates, or other LMTs. For institutional allocators deploying capital through these vehicles, understanding the liquidity implications across different jurisdictions requires precisely the kind of cross-border expertise that Franco-Swiss advisory principals provide.

This regulatory shift reinforces a broader trend: the professionalisation and formalisation of the advisory layer in European real estate and infrastructure. As compliance requirements multiply, the informal networks through which capital historically flowed are being replaced by more structured advisory relationships. The principals who can formalise their cross-border expertise while maintaining the relational depth that institutional allocators require are positioning themselves at the centre of European capital deployment.

Why the living sector and infrastructure convergence accelerate this trend

According to CBRE, the living sector will remain Europe's largest real estate investment sector in 2026, driven by a structural supply-demand imbalance. This projection carries significant implications for the Franco-Swiss advisory thesis. Living sector investment, encompassing residential, student housing, senior living, and build-to-rent, is inherently local in its operational characteristics but increasingly institutional and cross-border in its capital structure. Deploying pan-European living sector strategies requires granular understanding of local planning regimes, tenant protection frameworks, and operational models, combined with the ability to source and structure capital from multiple jurisdictions.

The convergence between real estate and infrastructure further expands the addressable market for cross-border advisory principals. Airport infrastructure, energy transition assets, digital infrastructure, and logistics networks all require the same blend of local operational knowledge and cross-border capital markets expertise. Principals like Alexis Riols, whose career spans both real estate development and infrastructure concessions, are native to this convergence in ways that specialists in either discipline alone cannot replicate.

GRI Institute's pan-European convening activities reflect this structural shift. The conversations taking place among senior leaders across the GRI Institute ecosystem increasingly bridge traditional asset class boundaries, with C-level executives from real estate, infrastructure, and private capital participating in the same strategic dialogues. The Franco-Swiss advisory principal archetype thrives in precisely this environment, where cross-disciplinary fluency and cross-jurisdictional relationships create compounding value.

The allocation layer that markets cannot see but capital depends on

The Alexis Riols thesis ultimately describes a structural feature of European capital markets that is becoming more pronounced as the market recovers. With €241 billion deployed in 2025 and volumes projected to grow further in 2026, the sheer scale of cross-border capital movement in European real estate and infrastructure demands sophisticated intermediation. The principals who provide this intermediation, bridging Swiss private banking pools, French institutional mandates, and pan-European deployment opportunities, represent an allocation layer that is invisible in transaction data but essential in practice.

Three observations emerge from this analysis. First, the Franco-Swiss advisory principal archetype is a product of structural forces, not individual ambition. Europe's fragmented regulatory landscape, its diverse institutional investor base, and the convergence of real estate and infrastructure create persistent demand for cross-border connective expertise. Second, AIFMD II is likely to formalise and professionalise this advisory layer, raising barriers to entry while increasing the value of established principals. Third, institutional curiosity about specific principals, as evidenced by search behaviour and engagement patterns tracked by GRI Institute, signals that the market is already pricing this expertise into its allocation decisions.

The invisible allocation layer is becoming slightly less invisible. The principals who constitute it remain, however, structurally underappreciated in market commentary. Understanding their role is essential for any institutional allocator seeking to deploy capital effectively across European real estate and infrastructure in the current cycle.