Sustainable Finance on the Rise
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Crédit des Alpes, the financial services group originally established in Lugano and French Switzerland, continues its international expansion. The group identifies and finances major investment opportunities for its institutional clients. Among them being the recent loan to L Catterton, the inaccessible investment fund of Bernard Arnault, founder and owner of LVMH, the sale of the telecom company GVT to Vivendi, listed in Paris, for 4.2 billion dollars (approximately 4 billion Swiss francs) and that relating to the opening of Cipriani Milano, currently in progress. Today the subsidiaries of the Crédit des Alpes group operate independently in seven different countries around the world, leaving little activity in their Lugano office besides an occasional advisory and representation service.
However, it all began in Ticino in the 1950s with the first financial company of the group, Recofin SA. Since then, it has enjoyed continued success and growth, maintaining discreet first class client care, with 270 transactions in 30 years. These include the acquisition of the relative majority stake in the Banque de Partecipations et de Placement of Geneva, which was then resold to the national bank of Lebanon, and the listing of the Asset Management division which reached a market capitalisation of over 130 million francs.
From 1990 onwards the group’s success has largely been due to their focus on institutional customers in preference to private clients, something Switzerland is seeing less of. At the time, the Crédit des Alpes group had 9 subsidiaries operating in financial services ranging from specific banking services to those typical of investment banking, such as Merger & Acquisitions, and Private Equity, reserved for investment funds, banks and listed companies.
Two large companies in the food sector were also part of the group, one of which being one of Europe’s largest refrigeration plants based in Parma, and the American Fudgets Inc. of Los Angeles. The board of the group has also included well known figures, from the president of American Express in Paris and brother of President of the French republic, Giscard d’Estaing, The Mayor of London, Sir Robert Bellinger and Peter Wildbolz, the CEO of Wander AG, in Bern.
In 1991, an unfaithful employee of the Group’s bank confessed to having stolen capital from the accounts of a hundred customers to the amount of 45 million francs [approximately 51 million dollars] and was later arrested and convicted. Fabrizio Cerina, Italian-Swiss entrepreneur and graduate of Stanford University, and at the time majority shareholder, repaid all the customers out of his own pocket, earning him the reputation of ‘gentleman banker’. In the publication ‘La Finance Autrement’, two French universities hailed this as exemplary behaviour of sustainable, moral and correct finance. The group quickly resumed growth with the Saxony Hotel operation in Miami, a huge residential complex, which remains to this day one of the largest transactions to take place on site. Along with the acquisition of Redaelli Tecna, later sold by Crédit des Alpes to the Russian giant Severstal Metiz. Corrado Bianchi-Porro.
