Pictet Brand Guidelines: Geneva’s 1805 Partnership & Its Lion Called Leo

A partnership deed signed in Geneva in 1805.

Pictet dates itself to 23 July 1805, when two young bankers, Jacob-Michel-François de Candolle and Jacques-Henry Mallet, signed a partnership deed in Geneva with three limited partners, the company says. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in a history published in November 2011, notes that both men were under thirty and that Geneva was then French; it joined the Swiss Confederation as a canton in 1815. Two years after the founding, Candolle’s friend Charles Turrettini became a partner, and the firm worked mainly in commission business, by the newspaper’s account. English Wikipedia adds that, like other Geneva banks of the time, it began in trade before turning to advising clients on their affairs and their wealth.

The Pictet name arrived in 1841, when Edouard Pictet, the nephew of Candolle’s wife, became a partner; the NZZ says he served the bank for 37 years, and the name has stayed with it since. Under later generations the bank grew: the newspaper describes Ernest Pictet as its leading figure in the late nineteenth century and his son Guillaume as building contacts in the United States and Latin America, while another family member, Lucien Pictet, co-founded the Swiss car marque Pic-Pic in 1895. The firm took the name Pictet & Cie in 1926, according to the company and English Wikipedia; the NZZ gives 1929.

For the years from 1939 to 1949, the NZZ says that, to offset the effects of the war, the bank, then with about 70 staff, diversified into commodities and property, owned a sea-freight company and had an oil refinery built in Antwerp. The sources used for this guide do not otherwise say how the bank conducted its client business between 1933 and 1945. From 1950 it concentrated again on wealth management.

Seven partners, no inheritance, three generations at the table.

Pictet’s structure is its signature. For 209 years it was a simple partnership and did not publish its results, English Wikipedia says. In 2014 it became a corporate partnership, a société en commandite par actions, acting as holding company for the group, and published annual results for the first time. Its rules of succession did not change: ownership cannot pass to partners’ children, and partners hand over in batches every five to ten years so that three generations overlap. The company says there have been only 47 partners in 220 years, with an average tenure of more than 21 years, that the ninth generation of the Pictet family is still active, and that the seven managing partners meet three times a week, with the senior partner as primus inter pares.

The business widened after the war. From the 1960s it served institutional investors such as pension funds, the NZZ says; staff grew from 70 in 1945 to 300 in 1980, and the bank opened offices in Tangier and Montevideo before choosing Montreal as its base in the Americas during the Cold War. In 1998, by the newspaper’s account, it was one of the first European banks to set up a family office. English Wikipedia describes three businesses today, wealth management, asset management and asset services, and notes that Pictet does not do investment banking or make commercial loans.

In culture, Pictet launched the Prix Pictet in 2008, a photography award on a set theme each cycle, from “Water” in 2008 to “Storm” in 2024, judged by an independent jury, English Wikipedia says. The legal record includes the United States: on 4 December 2023 Pictet concluded a final settlement with the US Department of Justice over services its private bank provided to American taxpayer clients between 2008 and 2014, under a three-year deferred prosecution agreement, by the same account.

How private banks present themselves.

Private banks and wealth managers sell trust, continuity and discretion rather than a product on a shelf, and their identities tend to say so quietly. Many lead with a founder’s surname or a family name set as a restrained serif wordmark, sometimes paired with a crest, a heraldic animal or a founding year. Pictet, for example, says its lion comes from a seventeenth-century family coat of arms and has carried the year 1805 beneath it since 1974.

Colour usually follows the same register. Deep green, navy, burgundy and dark brown are common choices across the sector, often set against cream, stone or white, with a muted gold or brass as an accent. The effect is closer to a bound annual report or a club library than to a retail bank, and bright, saturated colours are rare.

Imagery leans on history and people. Websites and printed material often show portraits of founders and partners, historic premises and archive photographs, alongside heritage timelines that count the generations or the years since the founding. Partnerships and family-controlled houses in particular use their age and ownership structure as part of the message, explaining how decisions are taken and who is responsible.

The content itself is advisory. Typical pages cover wealth planning and succession, family offices, investment views and house research, market commentary, sustainable investing and philanthropy services, often with long-form articles and reports rather than short promotional copy. For designers, the sector is a study in restraint: generous white space, careful typography and a narrow palette do much of the work that louder brands leave to slogans.

A family lion, redrawn for each era.

The lion is the core of the identity, and the company documents its history in detail. It says the rearing “lion issant,” nicknamed Leo, first appeared on the Pictet family’s coat of arms in the early seventeenth century, rising above the walls of Geneva, and was adopted as the bank’s symbol in 1955, on its 150th anniversary, with the old family motto “Fais bien et laisse dire.” In 1974 the motto gave way to the year “1805,” and the lion was redrawn with long claws and a fiery tongue in deep golden tones. In 1997 it was placed in a cage beside the letters PICTET; in 2002 it was set free again; and in 2015 it was adapted for screens, with ears, tongue and claws joined to the body.

The type has its own story. In 2021, the company says, the logo was adjusted to use Lardy, a custom corporate typeface it had commissioned, and the founding year and company name beneath the lion were updated. The company also lists its Geneva addresses over two centuries, from the Cour Saint-Pierre to the Route des Acacias, where it dates the Campus Pictet de Rochemont, a 23-storey building, to 2025.

For a design guide, Pictet shows how a single heraldic animal, redrawn every generation or two, can carry a partnership’s story. Compare Julius Baer, a Zurich bank that moved from family partnership to listing, and Lombard Odier, another Geneva private bank. For this guide we use a deep umber, a muted gold and Geneva stone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Pictet’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.