Five minutes with…  Ingo Steves

Swiss Life Asset Managers’ managing partner, logistics, caught up with CRE Media Europe on how he got into the industry, the company’s approach sustainability and more.

This article was published in our June 2025 magazine

Ingo Steves, Swiss Life Asset Managers’ managing partner

Could you tell me a bit about yourself?

How did you come to be working in logistics?  After graduating in business in Cologne, I first started in the finance sector at WestLB bank before working in management at the US-REIT Prologis for a few years. From there, I joined GLP in 2007, then known as Gazeley, where I most recently held the position of managing director Northern Europe, including head of operations Europe and China. During that time, we acquired and developed more than 2m sq m of logistics space for national and international clients.

When did you join Swiss Life?

In 2020, I joined Swiss Life Asset Managers to build up the logistics asset class and to create a leading pan-European logistics platform covering all service from investment to development and asset management. After finishing our first development pipeline ‘Seed’, including our award-winning project DeltaPort I, and establishing ourselves, we are now currently realising our second and European-wide pipeline ‘Roots’. 

How would you describe your investment strategy?

We are focussed on land-banking in carefully selected locations in the European main logistics corridors while developing our logistics properties with a customer-centric approach.

In the current market, is speculative development sensible?

Yes, absolutely. However, due to the current challenges, it takes an experienced team and the right location, as well as the delivery of a very sustainable building. That is our approach and we are still seeing rental growth.

How do you adapt the way you work with different clients?

A competitive advantage in logistics is that different clients from different industries still basically have the same approach regarding their building specifications. This leads to scalable, institutional standards for our logistics buildings which are very well received by our clients.

How do you adapt the way you work with different communities?

Communities usually have the same goals: they want to be sure that there is a long-term investment in the location that creates added value for them. We are achieving that by investing massively in the location with a sustainable and state-of-the-art building which – coupled with a carefully selected prime location – attracts great clients who in return create new jobs locally, pay taxes and often make additional investments in the region, further multiplying the benefits for communities.

How important is environmental sustainability to you? What role does logistics have to play in the fight against climate change?

If we consider the recent geopolitical trends as well as the continuing increase of e-commerce, logistics will only become more relevant in the future. Therefore, sustainability in logistics is of course an important factor in fighting climate change. We want to help guide logistics towards a sustainable future and therefore, sustainability – ecologically, economically but also socially – has been a part of our DNA at Swiss Life Asset Managers from the beginning. To see that customers and municipalities are actively asking for sustainability aspects as well confirms us in our approach. That is why all properties we develop receive an external sustainability certificate such as BREEAM, with all properties being in the range of ‘very good’ to ‘excellent’. To achieve this, we use a wide range of instruments, from the use of sustainable and high-quality building materials to a coordinated and optimised use of geothermal and solar energy.