The Partners of the Pictet Group

The Partners of the Pictet Group

Pictet is a partnership of seven owner-managers responsible for the entire activity of the Group. Our principles of succession and transmission of ownership have remained unchanged since foundation in 1805.

The Partners

Over the past 219 years there have been only 47 partners, each with an average tenure of over 21 years. Because the terms of the partners overlap, the knowledge, experience and values of each generation are absorbed and passed on without interruption. With the ninth generation of the Pictet family still active in the partnership, our structure ensures that we remain committed to maintaining the financial strength and solidity of the Group.

From left to right, seated: François Pictet, Elif Aktuğ, Marc Pictet (Senior Partner) and Laurent Ramsey. Standing: Raymond Sagayam, Sébastien Eisinger and Sven Holstenson. ©Guillaume Megevand for the Pictet Group

  • Evolution not revolution

    The virtue of Pictet’s partnership since the beginning is the overlapping tenure of the partners and their collective management principles. It means the business does not suffer radical changes in direction: fresh ideas, yes, but evolution not revolution.

In the Partners' Committee, we bring together the communication styles and structures found in families with those found in organisations. This combination optimises the risks and opportunities associated with both social systems.
— Remy Best, former Managing Partner

The nature of our partnership

Our partners’ morning Salon is like an orchestra tuning up before the performance. At the end of the meeting, the partners leave the room fully aligned for the day ahead. It sounds like a picture of harmony and concord. But it’s not so easy to reach decisions with eight independent minds around the table, and when the Senior Partner is, by tradition, primus inter pares.

That explains why the partners meet not once a week, or once a month — we can leave that for a board of directors with a CEO — but three times a week. Because each new proposal needs to be weighed, considered, tested, slept on, until a broad consensus is achieved. And even then, a strategy may be refined as it develops. It may seem like a recipe for indecision. Yet in business, too many decisions are taken in haste and regretted at leisure. A strategy that has been fully examined is much more likely to be — to use the former hedge fund manager and philosopher Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s term — ‘antifragile’ than the capricious actions of a CEO at the mercy of a vote by distant or disengaged shareholders.

The Salon in 1970 with, from left to right, Guy Demole, Denis de Marignac, Claude de Saussure, Michel Pictet, Jean-Pierre Demole, Edouard Pictet, Jean-Jacques Gautier, Pierre Pictet.

This business model may seem to lead to a less pressurised working environment. That’s not exactly so; it’s just that when the average tenure of a partner is of over twenty-one years, the pressure is long term, rather than short term. And that kind of future-oriented thinking extends throughout Pictet. It explains the value we attach to long-term thinking both in our relationships with clients and in business strategy; it promotes our sense of responsibility towards clients, colleagues and communities; it safeguards our independence of mind and action; and it feeds our entrepreneurial spirit.

 

Tsinghua University case study

“Our objective is to understand the inner operations of Pictet’s partnership model, identifying the key elements that have contributed to its ongoing growth and enduring strength.”

— Dr. Hao Gao, Director of NIFR Global Family Business Research Centre of Tsinghua University

Over a span of three years, the NIFR Global Family Business Research Centre of Tsinghua University conducted a case study on the Pictet model. In 2022, “Pictet: A Succession of Partnership Beyond Family” was published, exploring the Pictet Group’s history, business development and management practices.

Witten Institute case study

“Pictet’s partnership model seems to have found a way to exploit the advantages of family-type structures to the maximum, while at the same time reducing the associated risks to the minimum.”

Torsten Groth, Fritz B. Simon, Witten Institute

The Witten Institute for Family Business, the first research institute in Germany to specialise in family businesses, has published a case study on Pictet first in 2005, and updated most recently in September 2022.

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