Private banks across Europe are repositioning themselves around the coming intergenerational transfer of wealth. For Mirabaud Group, however, this has long been part of its DNA.
Founded in Geneva in 1819, the Group has operated continuously under family ownership for more than two centuries and seven generations. The Managing Partners — Nicolas Mirabaud, Camille Vial, and Lionel Aeschlimann — represent a line of stewardship that makes succession planning something the institution has practiced internally, not just advised on for clients.
Nicolas Mirabaud has framed the Group’s value proposition in direct terms: Mirabaud is a family serving other families, with an alignment of interests that extends to the Managing Partners’ own investment decisions. His personal wealth, he has noted, is largely invested in the Group — a posture that anchors the Bank’s commitment to long-term stewardship.
What the Entrepreneur Client Looks Like
Not all Mirabaud Clients are seasoned investors. Many arrive through a liquidity event — the sale of a business, the transfer of real estate, or a generational handover. For a significant portion of these clients, Mirabaud becomes their first structured relationship with a private bank.
Émilie Serrurier-Hoël, CEO of Mirabaud & Cie (Europe) SA, the European hub of Mirabaud Group, has described this dynamic in detail. The Bank often engages well before the transaction closes, working with partner firms, whether internal like Mirabaud Advisors in France or external ones, to help clients structure their assets and prepare succession frameworks in advance of a sale.
In Spain, Mirabaud formalised this capability in 2025 through an exclusive arrangement with Oquendo Corporate, an independent mergers and acquisitions advisory firm with over 20 years of experience advising family businesses on complex transactions. The partnership gives Spanish entrepreneur clients access to dedicated M&A counsel alongside the Bank’s wealth management services.
Private Assets: History Before Trend
Access to private market investments has become a selling point across the wealth management industry over the past several years. Mirabaud’s offer in this area predates the recent wave of interest. The Mirabaud family has committed capital to real assets across generations, and that practice shapes the Bank’s approach to offering similar access to clients.
Mirabaud & Cie (Europe) SA provides clients with a range of private asset structures — from evergreen semi-liquid funds that invest alongside leading private equity managers to direct co-investments and club deals. Nicolas Mirabaud has described the club deal process as deliberate: each opportunity is analysed for portfolio integration, local regulatory treatment, and tax implications before being presented to clients with the appropriate profile.
For entrepreneurs who have only ever owned a single concentrated asset, this kind of diversification into private markets opens a new chapter — one where the Bank’s own investment posture provides a form of shared commitment.
Next-Generation Engagement
Wealth transfer between generations carries complexity beyond the financial. Families come to the subject with differing values, different levels of investment literacy, and different ideas about what the money should accomplish.
Mirabaud handles this by treating next-generation engagement as a distinct relationship, not an extension of the parent’s account. Serrurier-Hoël has described a pattern in which clients want their children introduced to investment concepts gradually — gaining familiarity with asset classes and decisions before learning the full extent of the family’s holdings. Mirabaud organises events that bring younger clients together, building peer networks alongside the advisory relationship.
The Mirabaud Academy takes this further. Each year, children of clients spend several days at the Bank — meeting teams, observing operations, and building an early connection with institutional wealth management. It is the kind of initiative that makes practical sense only for an institution that expects those relationships to last.
For Mirabaud, Warren Buffett’s famous quote that “someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago” neatly captures the role of long-term stewardship in preserving wealth across generations. That orientation — toward durability over short-term transaction — defines both the Bank’s operational model and its 207-year track record.
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