Ilias Georgopoulos 

 

COMPANY :

Alter Domus 

POSITION: 

Global Head of Sales and Relationship Management 

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Team Spirit

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One of life’s ironies is that Ilias Georgopoulos, who has so many nautical antecedents, ended up in landlocked Luxembourg. Not only was he born in Athens, home to a seafaring entrepot from ancient times, his father was a shipping entrepreneur and Ilias himself started his career as a maritime broker.

 

A Long Journey

 

Despite being landlocked in Luxembourg Ilias retains a link to the oceans. He is an admirer of Homer’s epic poem of Odysseus’s eventful ten-year sea voyage to return home to Greece from the Trojan wars. Ilias’s own career “Odyssey,” before becoming Global Head of Sales and Relationship Management at Alter Domus, involved gaining 20 years of experience navigating the regulated and unregulated fund industry in the PERE and UCITS segments. He joined Alter Domus in 2017 after 12 years at RBC Investor Services Bank where he was a member of the Executive Committee in charge of the Client Strategic Development and co-responsible of the overall Bank Governance. Before RBC he spent eight years at State Street.

 

Balancing needs

 

All too often in the financial world there is the presumption that the “winner takes all” - and then basks in the glory of their own triumphs. But Ilias is not satisfied with that: he seeks a more balanced sense of achievement including both himself and his team that contributed to the success. While he sees "Winning in this fast-changing world is a great career opportunity," there are other elements that he believes business needs to take into account in achieving business success. The one is balance. He stresses the importance of his international customers in giving him balance: by evolving as a “player in the implementation of solutions” he has been able to reconcile the needs of global customers with the solutions he can offer through the framework Luxembourg provides as the center of innovation in the field of fund management.

 

Teams work

 

The other element that Ilias believes provides a major contribution to business success is teamwork. It is a quality he looks for when he analyzes personalities of successful people and tries to understand what made them successful and what will, therefore, improve the chances of continued success for both he and his team. His love of the Odyssey exemplifies this: Homer said of Odysseus's crew, "The recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all." Fortunately, Odysseus was a leader and more importantly, a team player. But in the ten years it took Odysseus to complete the Odyssey, Ilias does not expect to know where he will be; but how he expects to see himself - surrounded by a dynamic and enthusiastic team that accompanied him on the businesses successful journey. This will be accomplished by creating value for customers that has always been the priority for he and his team.

 

Facts & Figures

 

• Birthday: 1st july1967 

• Birth place: Athens 

• Nationality: Greek and Luxembourgish 

• Children: 2 children: 18 et 13 years old – A boy and a girl 

• Languages: Greek, French, English, and several European languages that allow me to order at the restaurant 

• Hobbies: Spending time with my family and my pets (dogs, cats, horses), driving my Jaguar E-Type, skiing and producing my own olive oil in the south of Greece. 
  
  MY FAVOURITE

• Cities: Athens (night life), Barcelona (atmosphere), Copenhagen (serenity), NY (paradoxes), Beijing (appearances) 

• Book: The Odyssey (Homer). So many metaphors and homecoming (team, family, getting lost and ending up, ...). A lifetime inside a book, and every chapter can be a life. 

• Restaurants: Meat, fresh vegetables and good olive oil. I also like Bordeaux wines 

• Music: Music with rhythm and melody 

• Artwork: Painting and architecture. I love going to the Louvre. I like when the architecture of the cities meets the nature.