The founding families The Lombard family (from
Lombardi) arrived in Geneva in 1573 from
Tortorella (
Kingdom of Naples), fleeing
religious persecution under viceroy
Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle. The two sons of Theodoro Lombardi, César and Marc-Antoine Lombard, performed
dressage and were involved in the
horse trade. They received the title of
burgesses of Geneva in 1589 for their services in the fight against the
duke of Savoie. The family came from
Pont-en-Royans in France. Louis Darier died accidentally shortly after the birth of his son, Hugues Darier, who became a prominent figure in
clockmaking and obtained the title of burgess of Geneva in 1787. His son, Henri Hentsch (1761–1835), founded the family bank in 1796. In 1793, Henri Hentsch was arrested by the Genevan revolutionaries and temporarily exiled to
Nyon, where he began a
silk trading business with an associate, Edmé Mémo. Despite the environment of economic difficulty and increased unemployment, Henri Hentsch came back to Geneva to found H. Hentsch & Cie on 11 January 1796, at the age of 35. Initially a proctor of Henri Hentsch, Jean-Gédéon became his partner at the bank on 19 June 1798. In spite of this, the firm was able to continue in business. Jean-Jacques Lullin left the bank on 31 December 1815, but continued as a limited partner until his death in 1837. Therefore, from 1816 the firm took the name Jean-Gédéon Lombard & Cie until 1 January 1826, when Jean-Gédéon Lombard partnered with Paul-Frédéric Bonna. The bank then took the name Lombard, Bonna & Cie. On 31 March 1830, Paul Frédéric Bonna left the firm to start his own bank, Bonna & Cie. The bank remained active for almost a century, before being absorbed into Hentsch & Cie in 1920. Charles Odier, who was 25 years old at the time, had learned the banking profession from the firm Gabriel Odier & Cie, which was managed by his Parisian cousin, and held significant assets from the success of the company F. Courant & Odier, which he founded in 1826 in
Le Havre for importing cotton from the USA. Jean-Eloi Lombard dedicated himself to local business while Charles Odier concerned himself with international business, particularly thanks to contacts that he had maintained from the US. In 1834, Alexandre Lombard, the third son of Jean-Gédéon Lombard (aged 24), became a managing partner for the bank. He was responsible for steering Lombard, Odier & Cie towards the American market, In 1857, the partners from Lombard, Odier & Cie participated in creating the
Geneva Stock Exchange. On 1 December 1859, the only son of Charles Odier, Jacques (also known as James) Odier, became a partner at the bank. This followed his trip to the US in 1854 and his marriage to Blanche Lombard in 1856, the daughter of Jean-Eloi. Jacques Odier continued to grow Lombard, Odier & Cie on American soil. Along with Jules Darier-Rey, in 1872 he also co-founded the Genevan life insurance company Genevoise Compagnie d'Assurance sur la Vie, which would later be chaired by his son Émile and then his grandson Edmond. Alexis Lombard, the son of Jean-Eloi Lombard and brother-in-law of Jacques Odier, became a partner in 1866. He became a founding member of the Chamber of Commerce of Geneva in 1872, created the Genevan Bank of loans and deposits in 1881, and became a member of the board of the
Swiss National Bank after it was created in 1907. Alexis Lombard and Jacques Odier remained partners at the bank for half a century, continuing to manage the firm through the
First World War, while their descendants Albert Lombard and Émile Odier were conscripted into the
Swiss army. had wide repercussions in Europe and on Swiss banks After the Great War, Émile Odier, (partner from 1890), Albert Lombard (partner from 1908), Albert's first cousin Jean Lombard (partner from 1913), and Émile's son Edmond Odier (partner from 1919) took over the management of the bank. In 1921, Lombard, Odier & Cie assumed ownership of the bank Lenoir, Julliard & Cie which was created in 1795. In 1929 and at the beginning of the 1930s, the Swiss financial sector was affected by the
Wall Street crash of 1929 and the
Great Depression, which impacted the whole of Europe. Several Swiss banks recapitalised or had to close, such as the Banque de Genève (1931) and the Comptoir d’Escompte de Genève (1934). Affected by its exposure to American markets, but eager to show that it would not be brought down by difficulties, Lombard, Odier & Cie changed its statutes in 1933 to become a general partnership, which held the group of acting partners responsible with their own personal assets in case of collapse. Nevertheless, the bank avoided this situation, and even absorbed Hentsch, Forget & Cie in 1934. In 1937, with the death of Edmond Odier, his wife Francine Odier-Dunant became a non-executive partner of the firm so that it could keep its registered company name and its status. She kept this position until her son Marcel Odier succeeded her in 1948. In 1941, the bank took ownership of SAGED, After the Second World War, business grew again: the bank's archives estimate that in 1950 its private clients’ assets reached nearly a billion Swiss francs and mostly came from Switzerland, France and Belgium. Under the management of Marcel Odier, the bank became international, opening its first branch in
Montreal in 1951, and established its first investment funding in Canadian real estate aimed at its private clients. In doing so, Lombard, Odier & Cie regularly began to introduce funds in which institutional investors could invest money for them to manage. With the arrival of Jean-François Chaponnière, Alain Patry, and Fernand Oltramare as partners in 1964, then of Laurent Dominici and Pierre Keller in 1970, the bank continued developing its base of international institutional clients, and opened divisions in America, Europe, the
Middle East and Asia. At the end of the 1990s, Lombard, Odier & Cie had around 800 employees, 600 of which were in Geneva, and 200 in foreign offices. The firm merged with Darier, Hentsch & Cie in the summer of 2002.
Darier, Hentsch & Cie , inquiring about
promissory notes negotiable in the United States (1811) Henri Hentsch turned to financing the French Empire from the year 1800. The bank Henri Hentsch & Cie most notably organised the transfer of funds to Italy, where the Empire was expanding. Thanks to its operations, Henri Hentsch had developed good relationships with the French upper class. After his death on 14 August 1835, his sons had already been for some time partners at the bank Hentsch & Cie in Geneva, but they did not take on managing the firms that their father had founded in Paris. In 1854, Édouard Hentsch (the grandson of Henri Hentsch) resumed managing of the bank Mathieu, Hentsch & Cie in Paris. He enjoyed a high-ranking career in finance, later becoming the president of the bank
Comptoir national d'escompte de Paris, and then the
Banque de l'Indochine, before founding the Swiss railways bank (
Banque des Chemins de fer suisses). Away from this turmoil, the bank Hentsch & Cie continued its operations in Geneva and was passed down the family for several generations. In the 1950s, under the management of Léonard Hentsch, the bank Hentsch & Cie became a pioneer in the distribution of investment funds in Switzerland. In 1837, Jean-François Chaponnière founded the bank Chaponnière & Cie in Geneva, which then became the bank Darier, Chaponnière & Cie in 1876, during the time when Jules Darier-Rey became a partner. This then became Darier & Cie in 1880. Before becoming a partner at the bank, in 1872 Jules Darier-Rey co-founded the first life insurance company in Geneva, La Genevoise, with James Odier. As with the bank Hentsch & Cie, Darier & Cie was passed down through the family for several generations. One of the first merger projects between Hentsch & Cie and Darier & Cie was planned in 1971 by the Hentsch bank, but did not succeed then. In 1872, Quatuor merged with Omnium, another private banking association in Geneva founded in 1849, regrouping Paccard, Ador & Cie, P.F. Bonna & Cie, as well as Ph. Roget & Fils. Together, these firms partnered with the new Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas to create the Finance Association of Geneva, with the aim of collecting enough capital to conduct financial operations in Switzerland and abroad. According to Bauer and Mottet (1986), this collaboration between Genevan private banks would be at the heart of their sustainability.
Lombard Odier Group In the summer of 2002, Lombard, Odier & Cie merged with Darier, Hentsch & Cie, creating the partnership Lombard, Odier, Darier, Hentsch & Cie. The merger resulted in one of the most significant private banks in Switzerland, totalling 20 branches abroad, 2,000 employees, and EUR 95 billion in managed assets. The descendants of the four historical families, Thierry Lombard, Patrick Odier, Pierre Darier and Christophe Hentsch were included in the bank's partners until the departure of Pierre Darier in 2010. Some time later, the firm simplified its corporate name and became the Compagnie Lombard, Odier & Cie. On 31 December 2015, the Lombard Odier bank announced that it had come to an agreement with the DOJ, which consisted of a US$99.8 million payout to settle the disputes linked to tax noncompliance. The firm changed its legal structure on 1 January 2014, becoming a
private company limited by shares, abandoning its status as a partnership, which held the partners responsible for their own personal assets indefinitely. This change of status also meant that the bank was henceforth obliged to publish its half-year and annual accounts. After losing its status as a partnership, the Lombard Odier Group considered itself obliged to leave the
Association of Swiss Private Bankers, which dictated that its members hold this status. Thierry Lombard retired at the end of 2014, and his son Alexis Lombard left the firm in April 2016, joining the board of directors of
Landolt & Cie in
Lausanne. In December 2016, the Swiss Public Ministry launched a criminal enquiry into the activities of the private bank Lombard, Odier & Cie for suspected
money laundering within the social circle of
Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the
former Uzbek president. It was claimed that the bank did not take "all reasonable and necessary organisational measures", as the Swiss penal code requires. The bank stated that it had reported these money laundering activities to the authorities.
Annika Falkengren, ex-Executive Director of
Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB), succeeded her a few months later, and joined as a managing partner of the firm from July 2017 until the end of 2023. As of 1 January 2023, the Group had six managing partners. == Operations ==