A partnership left to fester. A boardroom that stops speaking with one voice. A succession no one dared plan. Chōtei provides discreet, senior-level negotiation and mediation counsel to protect what's already at risk — before it becomes a loss you can't undo.
Bern, Switzerland — engagements handled locally and internationally, in strict confidence.
Chōtei is the Japanese term for mediation — resolution reached through structured, respectful dialogue rather than confrontation. It is also our operating principle. In high-stakes environments, disagreement is not a sign of failure; it is inevitable. What determines the outcome is whether it is managed early, by someone with no stake in either side, or left to escalate until the only options remaining are expensive ones.
We work with boards, partnerships, family enterprises and institutions at the moment a disagreement first threatens to harden — before positions calcify, before legal counsel is retained on both sides, and before the relationship itself becomes collateral damage.
The typical span of a commercial dispute before a Swiss court, from filing to judgment — longer still on appeal to a cantonal court or the Federal Supreme Court. Time during which contracts stall, decisions freeze, and the people involved simply leave.
Lost annually to unmanaged workplace conflict across UK and European organisations — equivalent to more than €1,140 per employee, every year, before a single case ever reaches a lawyer.
Swiss SMEs shut down not because the business fails, but because no successor can be found or agreed upon. The loss is rarely financial — it's an unresolved conversation.
Wins in litigation. The dispute becomes public record, the outcome is imposed rather than agreed, and the relationship rarely survives the process intact — regardless of who prevails.
→ None of this is inevitable. Every figure above describes what happens when a disagreement is left to run its own course. Engaged early, the same conflict is usually resolved in weeks, in private, on terms both sides helped write.
Each engagement is scoped to the specific relationship at risk — a partnership, a board, a family, a negotiation with a deadline attached.
We step in as a neutral third party to facilitate the conversation the parties can no longer have on their own — de-escalating tension, surfacing the actual interests beneath entrenched positions, and guiding everyone toward an agreement they helped author rather than one imposed on them.
Bring an expert negotiator to your side of the table. We prepare the strategy, stress-test your position before you walk in, and — where useful — sit alongside you in the room, so the outcome reflects your interests rather than the other side's leverage.
Not every negotiation needs an outside party — it needs a team that doesn't need one. We run workshops and one-on-one coaching for executives and boards, building the internal capability to recognise conflict early and resolve it before it requires intervention.
A discipline as deliberate, and as patient, as the garden itself.
Court filings are public. Mediation is not. What's discussed in the room stays there — protecting your organisation's reputation, your investors' confidence, and your family's privacy.
Mediated resolutions are commonly reached in weeks; litigated ones before a Swiss court typically take one to two years, longer on appeal — and cost each side a multiple of that in legal fees alone. The gap compounds the longer a dispute is left unaddressed.
A courtroom produces a winner and a loser. A well-run mediation produces an agreement both sides can still work under tomorrow — with the co-founder, the sibling, the board colleague still at the table.
A judge or arbitrator decides for you. In mediation, the outcome is written by the people who have to live with it — which is why compliance with mediated agreements consistently outpaces compliance with imposed rulings.
A co-founder or JV partner dispute that, left alone, stalls financing, spooks clients, and freezes the business it's meant to be building.
One in three Swiss SMEs closes for lack of an agreed successor — not lack of a viable business. Most losses trace back to a conversation that never happened.
Disputes where public exposure carries its own cost, independent of the underlying disagreement.
A split board or a donor dispute that, handled publicly, damages the trust the organisation depends on to operate at all.
Physician-partnership or hospital board disputes where continuity of patient care raises the cost of delay.
Co-founder and investor disputes that, unresolved, stall a raise or fracture a company before it has proven itself.
Athlete, federation and sponsor disputes where reputational exposure often outweighs the financial stakes.
Faculty governance and donor disputes that play out slowly, in public, in front of the community the institution serves.