A new independent financial services firm has opened in Geneva, aimed at the part of Swiss wealth management that perhaps struggles most with regulatory and operational demands: the smallest players.

Alpha Street Financial officially launched in August. The company was founded by Frédéric Oculy, the former head of advisory and discretionary mandates at JAR (Switzerland) in Geneva.

The firm offers strategic investment advisory to financial intermediaries, as well as access to investment opportunities sourced through its network, including off-market real estate transactions.

Targeting small and micro EAMs

The boutique’s core clients are small and micro external asset managers in French-speaking Switzerland. The pitch is institutional-grade guidance for firms that lack the scale to build these features in-house.

«Since the entry into force of FinIA and FinSA, these firms face growing regulatory, operational and investment demands, often with very lean teams,» founder Oculy told finews.com. «That’s precisely where we can add value.»

Alpha Street also works with family offices and professional investors interested in specific transactions, especially within real estate.

30 properties anchor planned club deal

On the investment side, Alpha Street provides strategic expertise across equities, derivatives and structured products. It also reviews its clients’ investment processes and product shelves, helping them develop these while providing access to a pool of banks, brokers and specialists.

The firm is already expanding. Its most advanced project is a real estate club deal focused on viager, the life-annuity property sales model, in Switzerland. In this arrangement, property owners sell their real estate in exchange for a lifetime annuity while often retaining the right to live in the property for the rest of their lives. Alpha Street currently holds 30 properties under exclusive mandate, which will form the basis of the club deal.

Banker with a Wall Street start

Before founding Alpha Street, Oculy was an investment manager at Deutsche Bank. Previously, he headed advisory and discretionary at JAR (Switzerland) in Geneva. He spent the decade prior at Société Générale, most recently as head of market solutions for the Swiss market. Earlier in his career, he worked in equities in New York at Merrill Lynch and JH Darbie & Co.