Gilbert de Botton (Hebrew: גילברט דה בוטון; 16 February 1935 – 27 August 2000) was an Egyptian-Israeli-Swiss financial pioneer, who is considered the inventor of the open architecture model of asset management,[3] whereby a financial institution offers third-party products to their clients.

[5] Gilbert de Botton was born in Alexandria, Egypt, to a distinguished Sephardic Jewish family.

[6] In 1968, when the British and French Rothschild banking houses decided jointly to establish an operation in Zurich, de Botton was recruited as its first managing director.

[7] Upon selling his stakes in the company in 1999, de Botton received a large sum of money, whose size has never been officially confirmed by buyer or seller.

[8] In 2003, GAM and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) announced the creation of the GAM Gilbert de Botton Award in Finance Research, an annual award given in recognition of outstanding research in finance, in honour of Gilbert de Botton.