François M. de Visscher
Co-Founder, Principal and Executive Chairman
International Advisory Board Member
François M. de Visscher, a native of Belgium, has been an active advisor to business owning families for over 30 years, mostly in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
François de Visscher is a Co-Founder, Principal and Executive Chairman of FODIS, LP. François and James Bly founded FODIS in 2018 after being partners of the Business Growth Alliance (BGA) since 2003.
Mr. de Visscher has a long career of advising business owning families and family offices. In 1990, he founded de Visscher & Co., one of the world's most renowned independent financial consulting and investment banking firms for family and closely-held companies. For over 25 years the team at de Visscher and Co. advised over 400 family companies and family offices worldwide on issues of liquidity of shareholders, capital needs of their business and direct investments.
Prior to opening his own firm he was a partner at Smith Barney, where he founded and ran Wall Street's first Family Business Group. In 1998, Mr. de Visscher founded "Family Capital Growth Partners", a private equity fund focused on making equity investments in family-owned and closely held companies.
Mr. de Visscher is a 4th generation shareholder and past director of his own family's global enterprise, N.V. Bekaert S.A. (Belgium) which was founded by his great-grandfather in 1880. Today, the Bekaert Group has sales of over $5.0 Billion in over 80 countries manufacturing and marketing a wide variety of steel wire and related products. Mr. de Visscher has been a partner, investor, advisor or director of several private corporations and family offices. He currently serves on the board of CYMI (Ohio), UltraPure (Connecticut) and Microboard (Connecticut).
Mr. de Visscher is Honorary Consul of Belgium in the United States and Chairman of the Society of Friends of Belgium in New York.
Mr. de Visscher is the past president of the Family Firm Institute, and a contributor to many publications, including The Wall Street Journal, LA Times, NY Times and many others. Mr. de Visscher is the recipient of the 'Richard Beckhart Award" from the Family Firm Institute in Boston, recognizing his many valuable contributions to the Field of Family Businesses.
Mr. de Visscher is a Certified Public Accountant and a member of the American Institute of CPA's. Mr. de Visscher holds a Bachelor of Economics honors degree from Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and MBA from Rutgers University (USA).
