Alexander Hoare

Spear’s review

‘As senior partner, I am steward of the firm’s values and heritage,’ says Alexander Hoare. These values continue to inform the character of the UK’s oldest family-owned bank (founded in 1672). For Hoare, who joined C. Hoare & Co. in 1987, profit and philanthropy are easy bedfellows. ‘We aim to be good bankers and good citizens,’ he says. A pioneer in the field of social and impact investing, Hoare is a founding partner of Snowball LLP, a diversified, multi-asset investment vehicle focused on positive outcomes for ‘people and planet’.

‘It has been my life’s work’, he says, ‘to demonstrate that you don’t have to descend to the unacceptable face of capitalism to earn an honest crust.’

Adviser Profile

‘One of my mantras is "small is beautiful",' says Alexander Hoare. ‘At C. Hoare & Co., we are selective as to which customers we take on. We only want customers who share our values and who want to enter into a long-term relationship with us.’ 

Hoare has always been a strong advocate of the ‘personal touch’. ‘Trust is only truly earned over time,' he points out, and ‘it is important to us to know our customers well in order to be of assistance to them. Our relatively small scale and very simple business allows us a certain agility. Our unlimited liability keeps us prudent. We’ve held to these principles for 350 years and they seem to work well for us.’