Frederic Hottinger, Financial News
About Frederic Hottinger
A Lifetime of Finance
Born in 1961 in Neuilly-sur-Seine with French-Swiss nationality, Hottinger grew up in France and completed his military service in the air force. With an interest in finance from a very early age, he studied finance, law and commerce at Business School Lausanne to become a certified New York Stock Exchange broker in 1985. Eager to gain new experiences outside the family business, he began his career working in the mergers and acquisitions department at Baring Brothers in London. In this role, he completed his junior training in a Hong Kong management bank during the time when England was transferring its sovereignty over Hong Kong to China. The late 1990s were rife with economic turmoil when he helped organise and prepare the transfer. Through his successive roles, as well as his time as a financial analyst with New York’s Brown Brothers & Harriman, Hottinger amassed a global vision of financial challenges and acquired a taste for the banking profession.
Breathing New Life and Building Relationships
In 1988, Hottinger returned to the family business and worked in the financial services marketing department. He took the reins of institutional banking relationships for five years before getting involved with the bank’s mergers and acquisitions activities. His new duties involved participating in large-scale acquisitions, particularly in the privatisation of Hungarian companies.
Seeking to better understand and experiment with each of the bank’s three main streams, Hottinger also focused on asset management within the family company.
He opened subsidiaries in England, Luxembourg, Austria and Canada during the 2000s to strengthen the company’s international reach. After the death of his father in 2015, he made critical decisions to define the company’s strategic policy and its reorganisation. He developed fruitful partnerships between the banking group and large global players, thus pooling their combined skills and resources. For better international reach, he oversaw the 2016 merger of the family’s holding company with Archimedes Private Office Limited, a private asset management company. In 2017, the company merged with Luxembourg-based investment company Iteram, thus adding real estate and asset management to its business. The newly-formed version of the company focuses on the needs of wealthy families who wish to see changes to the traditional model of private banking.
Sofibus : A Real Estate Company
During this same time, Hottinger also worked alongside his father for many years managing Sofibus. The real estate company specialises in real estate assets holding and management, operating the Petits Carreaux business park in Val-de-Marne. After his father’s death in 2015, Frederic Hottinger took the helm and became the VP of Sofibus. He oversaw the growth of the company, which has a perfectly healthy balance sheet and enjoys a business park occupancy rate in excess of 80%. Even during the 2012-2013 crisis, Sofibus’ occupancy rate never fell below 78% – a remarkable result and a testament to the company’s strong versatility. Hottinger became Chairman of Sofibus in 2017.
Hottinger’s Values
To Hottinger, finance is a great way to observe the economic world and is the key to understanding the contemporary world. Finance also means having a thirst for challenge, the desire to complete projects, and the ability to tap into the energy of the entrepreneurial world. These are Hottinger’s favourite subjects. He reconciles the family’s heritage with genuine passion, tradition, openness, respect for past values, awareness of the future and the necessity to adapt. Today, Hottinger strives to ensure the growth of the companies he’s recently reoriented and to increase the company’s influence in Europe. Because financial hubs have become increasingly larger and more anonymous, he works to make approachability one of his company’s core values, cultivating an environment in which people are supported on a human scale by companies that are responsive, independent and mindful of their best interests.
Parallel Passions:
From the Ocean to Video Gaming
Hottinger is very interested in new technologies and gradually invested in the US and Canadian video gaming universe. With an awareness of the growing potential for these games and a fascination of the concept, he is connected to start-up networks specialising in gaming platforms. He is also passionate about the world of art, particularly art from the 17th century. The Hottinger family company recently inaugurated Hottinger Art, a company structured to support and promote artists. In 2017, Hottinger Art acquired several paintings by English artist Benjamin Hope and continues to enhance its collection. Hottinger enjoys spending quality time with his family and children, and he invests his free time in studying foreign languages and working diligently to improve his abilities. He is passionate about the ocean and marine life, and he enjoys diving and navigation, especially along the Bahamian coasts.