A group of female Credit Suisse veterans are helping usher in a new era at a family office for one of the world’s oldest auto dynasties, joining a rising number of women in top roles at money managers for the ultra-rich.
The billionaire Opel family’s GVO Advisory Management recently hired Marina Viergutz as managing director for investments and Susanne Reinhard as group general counsel, according to a LinkedIn post from the Zug, Switzerland-based firm.
The pair previously worked at Credit Suisse for more than two decades between them. They follow the former head of the Swiss bank’s internal research unit, Lucia Waldner, who replaced longtime executive Michael Kuessner as CEO this year. The family office also recently hired Alexander Köhler as its CFO after he held a similar role at Swiss fund manager Mountain Partners.
A GVO representative didn’t respond to a request for additional comment.
The billionaire family behind GVO traces its fortune to 1862, when Adam Opel opened a bicycle and sewing-machine manufacturer in Germany that began making cars about four decades later, a move that ultimately saw it supply cars to the imperial court. They sold the company about a century ago to General Motors Co. — which owned the Opel brand until 2017, when it was bought by the maker of Peugeot, now part of Stellantis NV.
Adam Opel’s great-grandson Georg Von Opel, 58, helps oversee GVO, registry filings show. He’s a major shareholder in Athris AG, a Swiss investment firm that had net assets of about 1.2 billion Swiss francs ($1.3 billion) at the end of the first quarter, with almost half that total tied up in an endowment portfolio spanning hedge funds and private equity, according to regulatory filings.
Von Opel also has holdings in real estate spanning the UK and other parts of Europe as well as a horse-racing business, with Athris making up roughly half of his overall fortune.
SWISS TIES
Reinhard started out in legal roles at Credit Suisse shortly before the 2008 financial crisis and helped lead corporate governance for the chairman’s office ahead of its merger with rival UBS Group AG, where she later worked as a general counsel, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Viergutz helped to lead alternative investments at Credit Suisse for almost a decade before leaving in 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile. She most recently held a senior role sourcing deal opportunities for Arieli Capital, a family-office-backed investment firm.
Other women taking on senior roles at family offices include former Foresite Capital executive Alisa Mall, who was hired in 2022 to oversee Michael Dell’s assets. Suzi Kwon Cohen is chief investment officer of Mousse Partners, the investment firm for the dynasty behind Chanel; while Sergey Brin’s family office recently hired Rachel Teo, the former head of sustainability for Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, to manage green investments.