Maximillian Gottschalk

Max Gottschalk is a German-born investor with more than 25 years in asset management, hedge funds and private equity. He earned a B.A. in Finance, Marketing and International Business from the University of Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce, graduating with honors, and has since returned to McIntire as a guest lecturer on Global Impact Investing. He began his career at Bear Stearns & Co. in New York, where he ran the hedge fund sales team within the fixed-income derivatives group, structuring derivative strategies (fixed income, FX options, credit derivatives and emerging markets) for some of the largest hedge fund groups.

In August 1998 he co-founded Gottex Fund Management, a fund-of-hedge-funds and alternative asset manager. He helped design the firm's product suite and grew it into one of the leading global alternatives platforms, taking it public on the Swiss stock exchange (SIX) in 2007 at a market capitalization of roughly US$2.2 billion. He ran Gottex's European business from 1998 to 2011, then relocated to Hong Kong in 2011 to build out its Asia-Pacific operations while retaining global marketing responsibility, before departing the firm.

After Gottex, Gottschalk founded Vedra Partners, a multi-family office with operations in London and Switzerland that targets institutional pricing and streamlined portfolios to reduce the fee drag he argues erodes traditional private-bank returns. He has since become a serial founder of thematic impact and private-equity platforms: he co-founded Ocean 14 Capital (2019), a blue-economy impact private equity fund; co-founded Hycap, a hydrogen/energy-transition fund launched with JCB heir Jo Bamford; and joined Clinique La Prairie's Longevity Fund as a partner. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director and ESG Committee member at Aeon Investments and has been affiliated with Accelerate Investment Group.

• Impact at the core: For his flagship ocean fund he insists impact and returns run in parallel — "For Ocean 14, impact must be at the heart of what we do," with a dedicated impact committee holding veto power over deals.
• Blue economy conviction: Views the ocean/"blue economy" as a ~US$3 trillion annual sector; Ocean 14 targets sustainable aquaculture (a ~$250bn market growing ~7%/yr), alternative fish feed, circular plastics and marine ecosystem restoration/carbon sequestration.
• Return discipline: Ocean 14 targets net returns of 15%+, typically investing €10–15m into companies valued around €30–50m.
• Fee-efficiency philosophy: Through Vedra he argues that cutting the 2–3% annual all-in cost of traditional wealth management is itself a source of outperformance.
• Thematic, founder-led bets: Backs emerging companies and technology across energy transition (hydrogen via Hycap) and longevity/wellness (Clinique La Prairie), reflecting a pattern of co-founding and scaling platforms rather than passive checks.