For , CEO and managing director of the Luxembourg branch of Bank Pictet, the firm is “a reference player in the Luxembourg marketplace.” After 25 years spent working for JP Morgan, Pirola joined Pictet as chief risk officer in 2020 and was in December 2022. He officially took over the role in May 2023.
Present in the grand duchy since 1989, Pictet will celebrate its 35th anniversary here next year, noted Pirola, who is also the Luxembourg country officer for the group. With its business activities, client franchise and 800 employees, Pictet is a “relevant contributor to the financial centre.”
“Pictet is a natural citizen in the fabric of the activities for which Luxembourg--the fund industry and the wealth management industry--is well-known internationally for,” said Pirola. Though the firm was founded in Switzerland, the second-largest office of the group is in Luxembourg (after Geneva), “which really shows the importance that we attribute to this place,” he said. “We feel at home in Luxembourg.”
Three major priorities
It’s been just about a year since Pirola was named CEO of the Luxembourg branch of Pictet. What are some of the key priorities that lie ahead?
“The first one is to really foster the international posture and the profiling of the company,” replied Pirola. The company has more than 50 nationalities represented amongst its staff here and “our aspiration--and our vocation--is to position ourselves as an international player in the marketplace.”
Pirola’s arrival as CEO of the Luxembourg branch is also a “testament of that vocation,” he added. Before coming to Pictet, he worked in Milan, New York, London and Luxembourg for JP Morgan, where he gathered “strong international experience.”
Pictet doesn’t aspire to be the biggest--but we aspire to be the finest.
“The second priority is to continue to be a first-class service provider,” Pirola continued. “Pictet doesn’t aspire to be the biggest--but we aspire to be the finest. We want to be, in Luxembourg, an enabler of the group strategy. We house, in Luxembourg, approximately one-third of the whole group’s assets, in terms of assets under management, and we really want to continue to develop these first-class services and products for our clients.”
“The third priority for me as CEO is for Pictet in Luxembourg to be--and to continue to be--an employer of choice.” Engagement with the community is key, he highlighted. “We are a mirror” of the country’s society, and “it’s important that my team and my staff contribute to the development of the Luxembourg financial system.”
For Pirola, the firm and the country share several values: stability, long-term thinking, appropriate risk management, a fortress balance sheet and international exposure, to name a few. “So I think that those three priorities gel quite nicely with what Luxembourg is and excels in.”
Continue to leverage the brand
What are some of Pirola’s plans to grow the company and keep it competitive in Luxembourg?
“Fundamentally, my objective to grow is to continue to do what we do well,” replied Pirola. This involves leveraging the Pictet brand and its reputation via its employees. “We are an investment-led organisation,” he added, “so to grow our business, we will need to continue to do well in terms of investment performance, investment returns, first-class quality advisory and continue to be pioneers” in terms of new products, sectors and services.
CEOs should be “acutely aware” of environment
Asked about challenges that he was anticipating in the new role, Pirola replied that any CEO “should be acutely aware of the environment that we are living in.” His appointment coincided with a challenging geopolitical situation, he noted. At the time of the announcement that he had been named head of the Luxembourg branch, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had been going on for nearly a year; in recent weeks, conflict has erupted in the Middle East.
“We are in a world of uncertainty,” he added. “The universe of investable assets… is massively shrinking. And that’s another challenge in the role.” For years, the investable universe has been “almost unlimited,” Pirola argued. “The world was an investment manager’s oyster. Today, we can only extract value out of very specific types of assets and asset classes, and very often also out of specific sectors.”
“It’s also absolutely key that we remain focused on value-added investments,” Mario Pirola told Delano during an interview. Photo: Guy Wolff/Maison Moderne
And in certain segments, like ESG, investments must be done “responsibly.” “We need to behave really responsibly, keeping in mind growth, keeping in mind value and returns--because this is what we need to provide to our clients--but at the same time, with responsibility. And today, this one is a challenge.”
“It’s also absolutely key that we remain focused on value-added investments,” said Pirola. Looking at segments like private equity or private debt, there’s a lot of growth “that we need to be able to exploit and leverage for our clients.”
Ready to contribute to the community
Not only is Pictet is a “citizen” of Luxembourg, but so is Pirola. The CEO of the Luxembourg branch, who’s been in the grand duchy for the last 20-some years, recently became a Luxembourg citizen. It was important for him to be able to vote in the elections, he said, and obtaining Luxembourg nationality demonstrates his full commitment to the country.
As CEO, Pirola added that he’s excited to contribute to tackling the challenges that the country’s new government has ahead of it, as well as getting involved in local associations such as Luxembourg for Finance or the ABBL. “I’ve never seen in the US or in the UK such a collective and constructive unity of trade associations and industry players coming together for the benefit of an economy and a sector,” he said. “It is very unique and very rare.”
We just don’t want to be spectators. We really want to be an active player and a good citizen.
On a firm level, Pirola has already hosted two town halls for Pictet’s Luxembourg employees, aiming to make them feel part of a “larger community.” At its November town hall, for instance, a presentation from the Fondation Mérite Jeunesse took place, with the goal of raising awareness and inviting Pictet employees to support the foundation’s work.
The day of our interview, 30 November, Pirola mentioned that he had met with the head of the Fondation de Luxembourg, and the week before, had signed a partnership agreement with the Mudam to support the artistic and cultural scene of Luxembourg through various initiatives. “It’s really important for me that Pictet takes an active role for its employees, but also in this spirit of giving back to the community in supporting some of the philanthropic initiatives going on in Luxembourg.”
“We just don’t want to be spectators. We really want to be an active player and a good citizen.”
“Best-kept secret”
Regarding the move of the bank’s and took place in 2023, Pirola noted that might have called into question their commitment to the Luxembourg marketplace. But “that’s not at all how I see things,” he said, adding that “Pictet has a bright future for Luxembourg.” “We continue to recruit, actually, in a moment where it’s getting really, really difficult. We are still looking for talents, we are still looking for good profiles, people who want to join our company.”
Moreover, “Pictet in Luxembourg is not only represented by the bank, but it’s also represented by some other companies,” Pirola added. “The other companies here in Kirchberg are the asset management arm and the asset services provider. But Pictet in Luxembourg is also Pictet Technologies, which is a very unique and exciting venture that the group decided to establish a few years ago in Belval.” Pictet Technologies, which provides systems and applications for the banking group and its clients, was .
“Those multiple facets of Pictet in Luxembourg are what I would define as the best-kept secret,” he concluded.
This article was published for the Delano Finance newsletter, the weekly source for financial news in Luxembourg. .
Updated on 13 December at 10:15 to correct the date the bank’s head office moved to Frankfurt.