The Partners of the Pictet Group

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.

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.

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.