Citywealth Leaders List, 60 second interview – David Lambotte, Virdaris
This week’s 60 seconds Citywealth Leaders List interview is dedicated to David Lambotte, Founder at Virdaris.
Tell Citywealth readers a bit about your role.
I am the founder of Virdaris, a new Jersey regulated trust company business with a differentiated offering. Drawing on many years in the trustee industry and leadership in a prominent single family office, I set up Virdaris to leverage that experience and offer a wide range of family office connected services to UHNW families. Those services span short duration c-suite mandates through to a fully outsourced single family office. We also provide traditional private client trustee services to families who recognise value in our hands on expertise with assets and family governance.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Right now, very busy. Although it’s still early days for Virdaris we are fortunate to already have some large family office mandates which are time intensive. So a typical day is staying laser focused on serving their best interests. I like to think that our reputation from doing that well will drive the business forward. I also try to be present for my children and make sure I carve out time for their activities.
Tell us about some recent, interesting client instructions/requests you have received.
We love complexity, a challenge, high stakes. The one that comes to mind is a significant capital reallocation project that we are overseeing, taking a family from a highly concentrated position into new investment strategies that reflect the individual goals and wealth purposes for four distinct family branches. Inter-generational wealth transfers and fully rebooted asset allocations are rare events, so we are really enjoying our part in that journey. Lots of soft, tax, timing and other considerations go into doing this well, but we back ourselves to manage the project effectively.
What challenges do your clients face and how are you helping your clients to overcome them?
Family Offices all face resource challenges; short or long term, capacity or capability based. We help them with on demand executive or operational services which happily bolt-on to their existing structure and team members. No employment delays or complexities, the freedom to start and stop our services as needed, and most importantly some value adding voices that would be hard to source otherwise. A good example came two weeks ago when we assigned (within days) an experienced family office CFO from Virdaris into two family owned businesses to commence advice on best practise, their pathway towards greater profitability, improved cash management and enhanced decision making.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
I’d say it was my development journey in the single family office role I held for several years. I naively thought that I was ready made for the role when I walked in. I quickly discovered the huge learning curve and heightened responsibility of being at the coal face of not only large monetary decisions, but ones that affect people’s lives. I’m proud of the experience gained from that and enjoy applying my learnings with our clients. And what’s great is that the more clients we have, the more we learn and can benefit each of them.
What do you consider to be the most important attributes for a leader?
Authenticity is vitally important – showing up as your true self, no ‘game face’. Good leaders create accountable and actionable domains, assembling strong teams with leaders who can ‘own their space’. The best leaders also promote ego free and flat hierarchy cultures by the way they interact with everyone.
Who do you most admire and why?
Professionally I immediately thought of Nigel Le Quesne, CEO at JTC. The journey of that business during his tenure is truly remarkable and speaks to how good a leader he is. I started my career there around 25 years ago and was among the first 50 employees. I believe they have over 2,300 now! Nigel’s early decision to adopt an employee ownership model was a masterstroke and is taught in business schools these days.
Where was the last place you travelled to for work or pleasure?
It was work, and it was in Africa. Our latest client has a number of business interests in the continent that we oversee as the outsourced family office. There’s no substitute for getting on the ground and meeting the people involved, board reports only give you one version of the story.
If you weren’t in this industry, what else might you be doing?
In a fantasy world I would be on the PGA tour going head to head with Rory McIlroy for the majors. Back to reality, and with hindsight, I would have enjoyed a career in diplomatic service.
How do you relax after a long day?
Confession time. I really enjoy complex large build Lego to unwind in the evenings. My house is full of these completed sets now. If you catch me on Teams you’ll spot a 1:200 scale Lego Titanic on the shelf behind me, and slightly off camera I’m near to finishing the 9,000 piece Death Star
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Key Takeaways
- David Lambotte is the Founder of Virdaris, a Jersey regulated trust company offering family office services.
- His typical day is busy, focused on serving large family office mandates while balancing family time.
- Virdaris recently managed a complex capital reallocation project for a family, highlighting their expertise in high-stakes situations.
- They provide on-demand executive services to families facing resource challenges without employment complexities.
- Lambotte admires Nigel Le Quesne for his effective leadership and employee ownership model at JTC during a remarkable business expansion.
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