The Lombard family (from Lombardi) arrived in Geneva in 1573 from Tortorella (Kingdom of Naples), fleeing religious persecution under viceroy Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle.

[14][15] In 1793, Henri Hentsch was arrested by the Genevan revolutionaries and temporarily exiled to Nyon, where he began a silk trading business with an associate, Edmé Mémo.

[16] However, not long after this, Henri Hentsch and Jean-Gédéon Lombard came to a disagreement on the strategy they should take facing the climate of local economic downturn;[19] Jean-Gédéon Lombard wanted to limit the risks imposed by concentrating on bills of exchange operations which generated fixed commissions, while Henri Hentsch, renowned for his entrepreneurial and tenacious character, saw them moving into the international market, particularly for the finance of operations led by the First French Empire.

From 1800, the bankruptcy of the firm Corsanges in Lyon resulted in Jean-Gédéon Lombard losing 30,000 francs, causing Jean-Jacques Lullin to go bankrupt.

[26] Under the management of Jean-Eloi Lombard and Charles Odier, the bank financed large infrastructure works which characterised the Industrial Revolution.

This approach, which was deemed risky due to it coinciding with the end of the American financial crisis of 1837, proved to be a winning strategy ten years later.

[32][33] Along with Jules Darier-Rey, in 1872 he also co-founded the Genevan life insurance company Genevoise Compagnie d'Assurance sur la Vie, which would later be chaired by his son Émile and then his grandson Edmond.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Lombard, Odier & Cie with only sixteen employees and three office staff, was one of the largest private banks in Geneva.

[40] Affected by its exposure to American markets, but eager to show that it would not be brought down by difficulties, Lombard, Odier & Cie changed its statutes in 1933 to become a general partnership, which held the group of acting partners responsible with their own personal assets in case of collapse.

[42] In 1937, with the death of Edmond Odier, his wife Francine Odier-Dunant became a non-executive partner of the firm so that it could keep its registered company name and its status.

[45] Under the management of Marcel Odier, the bank became international, opening its first branch in Montreal in 1951, and established its first investment funding in Canadian real estate aimed at its private clients.

They then created a financial analysis branch in the bank, and guided Lombard, Odier & Cie towards a new venture in managing investment funds, aimed at a client base of institutional investors which had just begun to emerge (pension organisations and insurance companies among others).

[46] In doing so, Lombard, Odier & Cie regularly began to introduce funds in which institutional investors could invest money for them to manage.

With the arrival of Jean-François Chaponnière, Alain Patry, and Fernand Oltramare as partners in 1964, then of Laurent Dominici and Pierre Keller in 1970, the bank continued developing its base of international institutional clients, and opened divisions in America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

[52] He died in 1892, bankrupted by the crash of the copper trade in 1889, which caused the bank Comptoir national d’escompte de Paris to struggle with increasingly high repayments on his personal fortune.

[55] Before becoming a partner at the bank, in 1872 Jules Darier-Rey co-founded the first life insurance company in Geneva, La Genevoise,[56] with James Odier.

Together, these firms partnered with the new Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas to create the Finance Association of Geneva, with the aim of collecting enough capital to conduct financial operations in Switzerland and abroad.

[59] In the summer of 2002, Lombard, Odier & Cie merged with Darier, Hentsch & Cie, creating the partnership Lombard, Odier, Darier, Hentsch & Cie.[60] The merger resulted in one of the most significant private banks in Switzerland, totalling 20 branches abroad, 2,000 employees, and EUR 95 billion in managed assets.

[60] The merger was accompanied by a cost and workforce reduction plan, at a difficult time made even harsher by the fall of the stock market following the eruption of the dot-com bubble.

[60] In 2006, Lombard, Odier, Darier, Hentsch & Cie joined the Henokiens, an association which brings together family-owned businesses with over 200 years of history.

[62] On 31 December 2015, the Lombard Odier bank announced that it had come to an agreement with the DOJ, which consisted of a US$99.8 million payout to settle the disputes linked to tax noncompliance.

[63] The firm changed its legal structure on 1 January 2014, becoming a private company limited by shares, abandoning its status as a partnership, which held the partners responsible for their own personal assets indefinitely.

[68] In December 2016, the Swiss Public Ministry launched a criminal enquiry into the activities of the private bank Lombard, Odier & Cie for suspected money laundering within the social circle of Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of the former Uzbek president.

[70] Annika Falkengren, ex-Executive Director of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB), succeeded her a few months later, and joined as a managing partner of the firm from July 2017 until the end of 2023.

[95] The group of subsidiaries of the Lombard Odier in Europe were therefore considered in the legal and financial plan as branches of its Luxembourgish bank.

Upon launching, the only aim of Lombard, Odier Inc. was to relay information from the American side to Geneva, but quickly expanded to secure seats at the Boston (1969) and New York Stock Exchanges (1979).

Alexandre Lombard in his time participated in a supporting committee aiming to raise money to help those injured in the Second Italian War of Independence.

[104] His son, Alexis Lombard, was a member of the administration committee at the General Hospice of Geneva for 38 years, assuming presidency of the institution eleven times between 1876 and 1900.

[106] The Lombard Odier Foundation distributes between 1 and 1.5 million Swiss francs a year, mostly to projects in areas of education and humanitarian works.

[109] The Philanthropia foundation, created in 2008, invites clients of the bank to make donations for philanthropic work in five main areas: humanitarian and social, education and training, medical and scientific research, environment and sustainable development, and art and culture.