About de Visscher Advisors

Over the last 30 years, Francois and his team have advised over 300 family companies and family offices worldwide on issues of liquidity, growth capital business and family governance.

Francois M. de Visscher, a native of Belgium, Mr. de Visscher has advised business-owning families for over 30 years in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. He is a trusted advisor to family ownership groups, family offices, and family companies on a wide range of financial areas that span all evolutionary stages of the life of a family and its assets. These include advising on shareholder liquidity, capital needs and financing, intergenerational wealth and estate transfers, ownership and business restructuring, corporate acquisitions and divestitures, corporate and family governance, family office organization and performance, and diversification opportunities including direct investing.

In 1990, Mr. de Visscher founded de Visscher & Co., one of the world’s leading independent financial consulting firms for family and closely-held companies. He and his team have advised over 300 family companies and family offices worldwide on issues of liquidity, growth capital, and business and family governance. Prior to founding his own firm, Mr. de Visscher was a partner at Smith Barney, where he founded and ran Wall Street’s first Family Business Group. In 2010, de Visscher & Co. developed “Family Capital Partners” as a network of Single-Family Offices to make direct co-investments with other families (“Families Investing in Families®”).

In 2018, Mr. de Visscher co-founded FODIS LP., (“Family Office Direct Investment Services”) (www.fodis.com), and he combined de Visscher Advisors' Investment Banking and M&A services with those of Carter Morse & Goodrich located in Southport, CT (www.cartermorse.com). Finally in 2019, Mr. de Visscher also became a senior advisor and associate partner at Cambridge Advisors to Family Enterprise (www.cfeg.com), a highly specialized international advisory for serving family enterprises.

Mr. de Visscher is a shareholder and past Director of his own family’s global enterprise, N.V. Bekaert S.A., headquartered in Belgium and founded by his great-grandfather in 1880. Today the Bekaert Group has sales of $5 billion, operates in over 120 countries, and manufactures and markets a wide variety of steel wire and related products. The family company is publicly-traded and controlled by the Bekaert Family across five generations. Mr. de Visscher has held roles as a director on the board and a member of the family council.

He is a member of the Board of Advisors of CYMI, Ltd (Dayton, OH), MicroBoard (Seymour, CT), UltraPure (Darien, CT) and AUA Private Equity (West Palm Beach, FL).

Among his contributions to the family enterprise field, Mr. de Visscher served as a director and president of The Family Firm Institute (FFI), the preeminent association for family enterprise professionals. He is the former chairman of the European Family Office Conference, and has been a full time contributing editor of Family Business Magazine. He has contributed to many leading publications including The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times. In 2003, Mr. de Visscher received the Richard Beckhard Practice Award from the Family Firm Institute in recognition of his many contributions to the practice of advising family companies.

Mr. de Visscher is Honorary Consul of Belgium in the United States and serves as Chairman of The Society of Friends of Belgium in America. He is a certified public accountant and a member of the American Institute of CPAs. He holds a Bachelor of Economics honors degree from Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and an MBA from Rutgers University. Mr. de Visscher is fluent in English, Dutch and French.