A pivotal year for Odyssey - Interview with Antoine Duchateau

Earlier this year Odyssey Asset Management acquired a new shareholder in the form of the French arm of Apax Partners, a venture capital firm. It also expanded its capital base to provide the basis for further expansion.

“We were required to find a new shareholder following the decision of Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BCV) to reduce its venture capital activities following a change in strategy,” Mr Duchateau told Wealth Management. “And this led to Apax France acquiring BCV’s shares as well as injecting additional capital into the firm.”

According to Mr Duchateau, Odyssey’s chairman and biggest shareholder, Apax is now the firm’s second biggest shareholder. In addition to acquiring BCV’s stake in the company, Apax injected new capital and now holds around 18 percent of Odyssey’s equity.

Some readers may think that Odyssey has struck a deal with the corporate world’s equivalent of the devil. After all private equity firms are often perceived as institutions that have relatively short time horizons. Rigorous financial targets coupled with pre-defined exit strategies tend to be the rules of the game.

Mr Duchateau insists that this is not the case with Apax. “The firm has made a long term commitment to Odyssey,” he said. “This is no short-term fix”.

This stems from the fact that, like Odyssey, Apax is very bullish about the wealth management sector, especially when it comes to IT spend. Moreover, Odyssey should be well placed to benefit from the increased willingness of wealth management firms to spend more on IT, especially in the United States, a market in which Odyssey hopes to both broaden and deepen its footprint over the medium-term.

“We are very well positioned to benefit from the changes currently affecting the US market,” continued Mr Duchateau. “The US market is moving away from the broker-dealer model with its emphasis on a very restricted range of asset classes and products to a more holistic model embracing a plethora of asset classes, products, and services. This is arguably much nearer the European wealth management model and something which Odyssey’s wealth systems have been specifically designed to address.”

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