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International Business Times

Max-Hervé George: From French Prodigy to Architect of a €10 Billion Investment Platform

At 36 years old, Metz-born Max-Hervé George already straddles two worlds many financiers never bridge: the gilded circles of luxury hospitality and the button-down boardrooms of institutional capital. His new group formation, SWI Group, manages more than €10 billion in assets, following this spring's merger of London-based Icona Capital and Swiss real-assets house Stoneweg a deal Max-Hervé George personally fusioned and now co-leads. A Head Start in High Stakes Max-Hervé George's appetite for outsized bets surfaced early. Bornin Metz, France, he left law school at 21 to flip his first commercial property near Geneva and ploughed the profits into what would become Ultima Capital. By 2012 he was co-founding Ultima's ultra-luxury chalet portfolio; the flagship Ultima Gstaad opened in 2016 and helped land him on Forbes' "30 Under 30" list three years later. In 2023 he sold his remaining 33 % stake in Ultima for a reported US $1.4 billion enterprise value. Icona Capital: The Dry Run Operating out of London, Icona Capital specialised in "special-situations real estate" value-add deals like Ireland's Liffey Park tech campus and a Madrid logistics conversion. But Icona also revealed Max-Hervé George's wider ambitions: in 2022 it snapped up 40 % of Stoneweg, seeding an €8 billion platform that foreshadowed today's SWI Group. SWI Group: Scale Meets Governance The March 2025 unification of Icona and Stoneweg under the SWI banner instantly vaulted Max-Hervé George into the European big league: 350 employees, 26 offices across 18 countries, and a balance-sheet that spans data centres, logistics boxes, city-centre offices and a nascent sports-and-entertainment vertical. RathFollowing the launch of SWI Group, Max-Hervé George announced an International Strategic Advisory Board chaired by Vivendi boss Arnaud de Puyfontaine, wealth-management veteran Simon Benhamou and real-asset guru Olivier Jollin. Their remit: apply Fortune-500 discipline to a millennial-led growth story. It was a signal to pensions and sovereign funds that SWI's break-neck expansion would come with adult supervision. Management Style: High Velocity, High Visibility Although Max-Hervé George's public persona is by nature private, a single LinkedIn post announcing SWI's board hit 120,000 impressions, buoyed by congratulatory emojis from Formula 1 star Charles Leclerc and football icon Andrés Iniesta, both newly minted special advisers to SWI's Sports & Entertainment Committee. That digital fluency pays practical dividends: the firm's €500 million green bond in May priced 130 bps over mid-swaps and closed 3.8 × oversubscribed, an outlier result in a jittery credit market. Asia on the Radar Singapore bankers whisper that Max-Hervé George is eyeing Marina Bay for his first Asia hub hardly surprising given Southeast Asia's forecast 15–20 % CAGR in data-centre demand. Asked by IBT Singapore about the rumour, he responds humbly "Singapore has many opportunities and one would be lucky to get a stake". Beyond the Balance Sheet Friends describe Max-Hervé George as "relentlessly competitive" traits perhaps rooted in his stint handing out heavyweight judo medals at the Tokyo Olympics and his Aries star-sign bravado. Yet colleagues note a softer angle: hands-on mentoring of scholarship students and a private foundation that bankrolls children's oncology research.. What Comes Next Over coffee in London's Fitzrovia, Max-Hervé George outlines a three-year roadmap: 2 GW hyperscale build-out across five European countries, stitched together via SWI's AiOnX platform. €1.2 bn private-credit fund to finance grid upgrades underpinning those data centres. Sports/Media JV that pairs elite athletes with content studios "patronage for the TikTok age," he quips. Each pillar, he argues, leverages the same formula: institutional capital plus pop-culture "brand gravity" plus a forensic ESG audit trail. The Takeaway Max-Hervé George's rise reads like a millennial fairy-tale lavish chalets nine-figure exits but the through-line is unusually clear: bet early, be agile but aggressive, scale fast, and professionalise governance before the sceptics ask. If he can keep that balance, France's onetime "golden boy" may yet redefine how a new generation of asset managers talks to the world's most conservative capital.