Fairfield Greenwich Group is an investment firm founded in 1983 in New York City. The firm had among the largest exposures to the Bernard Madoff fraud.
History of the firm
The firm was founded in 1983 by Walter M. Noel Jr. At one time, the firm operated from Noel's adopted hometown in Greenwich, Connecticut, before relocating its headquarters to New York City, New York.
In 1989, Noel merged his business with a small brokerage firm whose general partner was Jeffrey Tucker, who had worked as a lawyer in the enforcement division of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Both Noel and Tucker are semi-retired.
Fairfield offered feeder funds of single-strategy trading managers. Fairfield also started several fund of funds, each investing in a basket of hedge funds, though the offering of feeder funds has been the primary business of Fairfield. It described its investigation of investment options as "deeper and broader" than competitive firms, because of Tucker's regulatory experience.
Fairfield Greenwich's website says it "employs a significantly higher level of due diligence work than typically performed by most fund of funds and consulting firms". It is an employee-owned firm with 140 employees, 21 of whom are shareholders. At one time, it reported $16 billion in assets under management.
It was reported that foreign investors provided 95% of its managed assets, 68% from Europe, 6% from Asia, and 4% from the Middle East. Each of Noel's four daughters married into international families.
In 2008, Fairfield Greenwich reported more than $14 billion in assets under management.
Founding partners
Walter M. Noel, Jr. and family
Presently, Walter Noel has a 17% ownership interest.
Walter Miller Noel, Jr. was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1930 to Walter and Corinne (née Travis) Noel. At the time of Noel's birth, his father was a mortgage appraiser. The family moved to Kenmore, New York, a suburb of Buffalo, where Noel was raised. Noel attended Montgomery Bell Academy, Vanderbilt University and Harvard Law School. Noel had previously been a private banker in Lausanne, Switzerland, then worked at Citigroup, before becoming the head of Chemical Bank's international private banking practice in Nigeria, Switzerland, and Brazil.
Noel met his Brazilian-born wife, Monica Haegler, who hails from a prominent Swiss family, while she was studying at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. They have five daughters and 19 grandchildren. Their daughters married into families that provided additional connections for the firm and helped funnel money into Madoff's fund: His eldest daughter, Corina, married Colombian Andrés Piedrahita in 1989; she lives in Madrid, London and Manhattan. Lisina, who lives in Milan, married Yanko Della Schiava, the son of the editor of Cosmopolitan in Italy and of the editor of Harper's Bazaar in Italy and France. Ariane married Florence-born Marco Sodi, head of VSS's London-based affiliate, Veronis Suhler Stevenson International, and a partner and managing member of Veronis Suhler Stevenson Funds. They live in Notting Hill, London. Alix married Philip Jamchid Toub, the son of a director of the Saronic Shipping Company in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is also a former FGG partner, and the couple lives in Greenwich. The youngest daughter, Marisa, married Matthew Brown, an asset manager and the son of a former mayor of San Marino, California. Marisa listed her New York townhouse after the Madoff revelations; she is now a jewelry designer and founder of TRE, an accessories business.
Three of Noel's sons-in-law eventually became partners, promoting the firm's funds in their home countries and other regions, and funneled money into Bernie Madoff's funds. Piedrahita was named a Fairfield founding partner in 2007; he owns 22 percent and became one of the firm's dominant representatives of European and Latin American banking and investment. Della Schiava helmed Noel funds in Madrid and Lugano, Switzerland. Toub was the "agent" for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Safra National Bank of New York, and the National Bank of Kuwait. Monica Noel's niece, Bianca Haegler, a well-known Brazilian socialite, and her father, Alex, reportedly steered Brazilian investors to the firm, as did her cousin Jorge Paulo Lemann, Brazil's richest financier, co-owner of InBev, Budweiser's parent company.
Jeffrey Tucker
Jeffrey Tucker also had a 17% interest in the firm. Though he is not as prominent as the Noels, Tucker benefited from Fairfield's success. In 2007, Tucker, chairman of Empire Racing, led the group of thoroughbred investors, who sought to bid for New York State's horse-racing franchise.