Medtech tycoon Hans-Joerg Wyss is surfacing as a sizable shareholder in a Swiss investment boutique.

Swiss businessman-philanthropist Hansjoerg Wyss is taking a 9.7 percent stake in Bellevue Group, a Zurich-based investment house, it said in a statement on Wednesday. Wyss, who is based in the U.S., cashed out when the medtech firm he founded in 1999, Synthes, was bought by Johnson & Johnson for $19.3 billion in 2011.

The exceedingly private 85-year-old billionaire is buying the stake currently held by Joerg Bantleon, who founded Zug-based Bantleon Bank in 1991. Bellevue didn't disclose the purchase terms. At current share prices, Wyss (who is estimated to be worth more than $7 billion) would have splashed out just north of 3 million Swiss francs ($3.3 million) for the stake. 

Conservation Donor

Besides Synthes, Wyss is known as «Client Number 5» in a U.S. investigation of Credit Suisse. The Swiss wealth manager's bankers in the U.S. and in Switzerland had fought extensively over where to book assets belonging to Wyss – confidential information which spilled out as part of a 2014 U.S. Senate hearing to grill Credit Suisse.

The bank settled the probe, which didn't involve Wyss directly, for a record $2.5 billion later that year. Wyss is a potent donor to wildlife and conservation efforts; in 2018, he pledged to give away $1 billion (behind paywall) by 2028.