Olivier Mivelaz

Olivier Pascal Mivelaz is a Swiss national with roughly 40 years of international banking and finance experience, accumulated as a Managing Director and Board Member at various Swiss banks across Europe, the USA and Asia. By his own account he worked for four banks over a 20-year period before striking out independently, citing recurring frustrations with "politics, jealousy, arrogance" inside large institutions as his motivation to build something of his own.

In 2004 he founded Swiss-Asia Financial Services Pte Ltd in Singapore — one of the very first Singapore-licensed independent wealth and fund management companies, bringing a Swiss-style external asset manager (EAM) model to Southeast Asia. The firm expanded into Hong Kong in 2010–2011 (operating there as Swiss-Asia Asset Management Ltd under an SFC licence). Under his leadership the platform grew to roughly 80 staff across its two core markets and assets under management exceeding SGD 3.6 billion, positioning itself as one of the region's earliest and largest independent wealth platforms, offering insourced and outsourced infrastructure for independent wealth managers, private funds and hedge funds, plus family-office services.

In 2024 the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) imposed a composition penalty of S$2.5 million on Swiss-Asia Financial Services for AML/CFT (anti-money-laundering / countering financing of terrorism) breaches, and reprimanded Mivelaz (as then-CEO) and the COO for failing to ensure compliance with AML/CFT requirements. Following this, the firm announced a leadership transition: Pying-Huan Christine Wang was named the new CEO (reported April 2025), and Mivelaz moved into the role of Executive Chairman, stepping back from day-to-day chief-executive duties while retaining a leadership and ownership role.

A note on the "angel investor / seed" designation: Mivelaz appears in investor/deal databases tagged as an angel investor focused on seed rounds, which is the basis for the stub data above. However, public, primary-source evidence of his individual startup angel investing is thin — his documented public profile centers overwhelmingly on founding and running the Swiss-Asia wealth-management platform. Founders should treat the angel/seed label as plausible but lightly evidenced and confirm directly.

• Career and firm are built on independence — Mivelaz's stated driving philosophy is being independent of large banks: "I have always dreamt of being independent."
• Professional focus is wealth and fund management / alternative investments through the Swiss-Asia EAM platform serving accredited and professional investors, rather than a publicly articulated venture thesis.
• Has expressed personal interest in emerging asset classes, including cryptocurrency and alternatives.
• Per investor-database listings, is associated with angel / seed-stage investing — though specific stated criteria, check sizes, or a written thesis could not be verified from primary sources.