Walter Noel is the founder of Fairfield Greenwich Group, an investment firm founded in 1983 in New York City. The firm had among the largest exposures to the Bernard Madoff fraud.
Noel had previously been a private banker in Lausanne, Switzerland, then worked at Citigroup before becoming the head of Chemical Bank's international private banking practice in Nigeria, Switzerland, and Brazil. His family also owns an apartment on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a winter home in Palm Beach, FL, and a 42-room retreat on Caribbean island of Mustique.
Three of Noel’s sons-in-law eventually became partners, promoting the firm’s funds in either their home countries or regions where they had their own family connections, and funneled money into Bernie Madoff's funds. They ultimately had roughly $7 billion with Madoff.