Complexity is our design language.
Reed-Frank Group advises European industrial companies on strategic growth: at home, internationally, and in the United States. The firm’s depth lies where commercial expansion, government industrial policy, and defense procurement intersect. The deliverable is not the analysis. It is the position it produces.
The firm’s principal developed and delivered a novel application of industrial cooperation frameworks that structured industrial participation credits exceeding $1 billion under active competitive conditions. That methodology continues to produce value across active mandates and is increasingly recognized in how comparable programs are designed. The principal’s prior program leadership encompassed a contested multinational fighter competition and the simultaneous management of commercial, governmental, and prime contractor stakeholders.
RFG was founded in 2024 at a specific inflection point: the moment when access to powerful analytical tools negated the premium once charged by established advisory firms, and when multi-client conflicts of interest became impossible to ignore. The constraint is not access to information. It is knowing how it will be interpreted by the counterparty before it is presented. The advisory model that answers this shift is principal-led, conflict-free, and built on judgment and perspective developed from within these frameworks at the program level: not just in how they are structured, but in how they are read by the parties they are designed to govern.
Growth Strategy. The less-traveled routes to expansion: new markets, new structures, new partners.
Gateway · U.S. Market Entry. Site selection, partnering, and establishment strategy for international firms building a U.S. presence.
Industrial Cooperation. Where a client’s organic expansion aligns with industrial participation requirements elsewhere, RFG recognizes the connection and brings the parties together around projects with genuine commercial logic of their own.
Clients do not simply enter markets. They enter on structured terms.
The mandates that reach RFG rarely fit a single discipline. That is by design.
The Federal Council formalized on March 20 what SECO had already been applying since February 28: no new export licenses for war matériel to the United States for the duration of the conflict. The U.S. was Switzerland’s second-largest defense export market in 2025. Industry association Swissmem called the decision premature. Parliament had voted in December to relax re-export rules for 25 Western countries including the U.S. — but that legislation has not yet taken effect and remains subject to a referendum. For Swiss defense firms dependent on U.S. export revenue, the ban is indefinite in duration and structurally familiar: the same neutrality logic that blocked Swiss-made equipment from reaching Ukraine now applies to the United States. A physical U.S. manufacturing presence changes that calculus in ways no export license can.
May 3–6, 2026 U.S. Market EntryThe 2026 summit drew over 5,000 attendees from more than 100 countries, with record investment commitments and headline themes of manufacturing renaissance, AI, and critical minerals. RFG was invited to attend a function for the Swiss and Liechtenstein delegation, alongside Swiss defense and industrial representatives, held in Washington on the sidelines of the summit. The engagement confirmed a pattern visible across the summit floor: the question for foreign industrial firms is no longer whether to establish a U.S. presence, but how to do so before the competitive window closes.
The Section 122 surcharge reached its statutory expiration on July 24, after the Court of International Trade ruled it unlawful in May and the Federal Circuit stayed that ruling on appeal. A successor framework under Section 301 took effect the same day, applying a two-tier tariff across roughly sixty economies. Refund litigation on five months of collected duties continues. For companies evaluating a permanent U.S. presence, the lesson has not changed: the legal mechanism will continue to shift. A physical footprint resolves what no tariff ruling can.
July 20–24, 2026 European Defense · Industrial CooperationRFG attended Farnborough in July, engaging industrial participation leaders across the European aerospace and defense community. Conversations spanned several European markets and included obligor-side teams, industry cluster representatives, and advisory firms. A consistent observation emerged across those conversations: procurement authorities in Europe are moving toward qualitative, project-based evaluation of industrial cooperation, weighting strategic relevance over credit volume. For firms structuring commitments in that environment, the design of a project now matters as much as its size.
June 24, 2026 Defense ProcurementAfter nine months of frozen payments and a formal review that included complete termination, the Federal Council decided on June 24 to remain in the Patriot program and resume payments, protecting the F-35 procurement and F/A-18 spare parts pipeline that share the same FMS trust fund. Program costs are now projected between CHF 3.7 and 6.3 billion. In parallel, the defense department has opened contract negotiations with manufacturers in France, Israel, and South Korea for a second ground-based system, to be produced preferably in Europe. Diversification at this scale is not only a procurement decision. Each new supplier relationship carries its own industrial cooperation dimension, and those terms are being framed now.
May 21, 2026 Industrial CooperationThe global industrial cooperation community gathered in Reston this week — obligors, government administrators, policy officials, and industry from across North America and Europe, including senior industrial participation leaders from major European and American defense primes. The dominant theme was not regulatory change or budget expansion. It was the same problem that surfaces in every active market: the gap between what obligors understand about how frameworks operate in practice, and what the other side is prepared to evaluate. Government administrators described reviewing proposals without the framework to assess whether the terms reflect market reality. Policy officials drafting new frameworks described uncertainty about what obligations are actually executable versus what will be offered on paper. RFG’s principal attended and held substantive conversations across all sides of that table. The next GICA conference is scheduled for Lisbon, November 2026.
April 5, 2026 Austria · Defense ProcurementSeven platforms are under evaluation for Austria’s next fighter requirement, with a contract targeted by 2029. At this scale — 36 aircraft, €6–7 billion — the industrial cooperation obligation will be the largest in Austrian history. The framework that governs it is still being written. Political debate over program funding has already surfaced at the ministerial level. That friction does not pause the industrial cooperation architecture window. It compresses it.
March 25, 2026 Brazil · Industrial CooperationEmbraer and Saab unveiled the first F-39E Gripen assembled in Brazil on March 25 at Gavião Peixoto — the first time in Saab’s history that a fighter has been manufactured outside Sweden. The program embeds 15 locally assembled aircraft within a broader technology transfer and co-production agreement that Saab has stated it now intends to replicate in other markets. Concurrently, Brazil’s pending Cybersecurity Legal Framework explicitly incentivizes domestic R&D as a component of public procurement compliance. For firms with emerging technology to structure, Brazil’s offset framework rewards local production and genuine technology transfer above financial compensation alone.
March 20, 2026 Switzerland · Industrial CooperationThe Federal Council’s Armaments Programme 2026 projects orders of approximately CHF 1 billion to Swiss companies and offset obligations of CHF 990 million on foreign procurements, benefiting research institutions and companies of the security-relevant technology and industrial base. The operative armasuisse Offset Policy requires compensation of 100% of contract value above CHF 20 million, monitored quarterly and published in a public register naming obligors, fulfilment rates, and Swiss beneficiaries. For foreign suppliers, the baseline is set and visible. For Swiss industry, the pipeline of obligations to be fulfilled is growing.
February 18, 2026 Peru · Offset PolicyPeru’s February revision of its offset directive formalized two banking modalities. The first allows a foreign company to present an offset project without any underlying procurement contract, banking the credits for future use. The second covers credits generated in excess of a contract’s obligation. Banked credits are valid for five years and applicable against up to half of a future obligation. The mechanism changes the sequencing logic of the Peruvian market: firms that build credit positions before competing enter their next negotiation holding an asset, not just an obligation. Few of them are doing so.
October 23, 2025 Peru · Market AccessRFG participated as guest of the Swiss-Peruvian Chamber of Commerce, at a forum attended by Peru’s Minister of Defense, the Commander Generals of the armed services, and senior defense industry leadership. Within six weeks, Peru signed a landmark armored vehicle agreement that included a domestic production licensing arrangement. Institutional access at this level is built over time, not arranged at the proposal stage.
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