About Us
Bellier delivers a one-stop, results-driven shop for all communication needs
We combine strategic thinking and content creation with high-level writing skills. Our services include an in-house media monitoring and analysis support group, as well as a trusted pool of third-party specialists in areas such as high-quality video productions and communication training courses, which we draw on for projects when necessary.
Clients gain from our deep market knowledge of real estate and investment management, as well as our innate understanding of what makes a good story.
The Bellier Story
It’s noisy out there. The media agenda changes daily, and it is getting harder to get your story heard. Bringing your brand to life requires an in-depth understanding of your markets and simply better communication. Bellier Communication provides just that. The power we give your stories helps to build awareness, strengthen your reputation, and enhance relationships.
We operate across a wide spectrum of financial services and corporate PR encompassing: investment management, private equity, real estate, Fintech and industrials. With a track record spanning 20 years, we rank among the most knowledgeable and experienced communication agencies in our field in Europe. As experts, we can hit the ground running, bringing an innate understanding of what really matters to your audiences.
Thanks to our editorial background and blue-chip corporate experience, we are meticulous about words. Together we articulate your corporate narrative and support your business purpose. We work with you to tease out and tell the stories that bring your strategic goals to life.
We are authentic, bringing genuine interest to the relationships we build with our clients, the media, and colleagues. Classic with a modern twist, our spirited approach and curiosity, combined with a breadth and depth of talent and expert skills, means we consistently deliver results.
Bellier – Simply Better Communication
Xavier Jongen, Managing Director, Catella Residential Investment Management:
“We feel at home with Bellier’s culture because they share our values and care about the planet and how our industry fits into that in a meaningful way. There is also wit and ‘twinkles’ of insights with them that don’t always need to make it into words, but are valuable nonetheless.”
OUR VALUES
Our values define our culture. At Bellier we are:
Authentic – always open and honest, we never over-promise and strive always to do our very best for clients, with integrity.
Curious – we are always willing to learn. We remain curious for and about our clients allowing us to provide the very best advice, to craft the best stories and secure the best coverage
Meticulous – we take pride in the work we do, ensuring we always have an eye for the smallest detail and taking time to make sure that we present our client in the best possible light
Spirited – we like to challenge and provide an honest opinion – even if that sometimes means saying ‘No’
Empathetic – life and work aren’t always easy, we get that - our door is always open for a chat, coffee or a drink or two.
“Bellier is regularly contracted by the top global corporate private equity players as an advisor on M&A deals in the Benelux and German markets.”
Our clients are dynamic growth-orientated businesses looking to enhance their profiles with targeted pan-European stakeholders. Headquartered in Amsterdam, with Anglo-Dutch roots, we bring a uniquely European perspective and a thorough understanding of how to navigate the European media and business landscape.
– THE RAM BY THE DAM
Bellier takes its name from the French translation of the astrological sign of Aries, or ‘Ram’. In French it refers to a ‘battering ram,’ used to break down the gates of fortresses.
We like to think of ourselves as breaking down pro-forma approaches to communication with a more journalistic-style of storytelling for our clients.
The French ‘Belier’ is spelt with one ‘L’, but when Bellier was registered at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam by the company’s founders Edwin Nabbe and Steve Hays in 2005, it was mistakingly spelled with two ‘LLs.’ Despite our passion for accuracy, we kind of liked the name’s chic look and sound in English, French and Dutch, so decided to keep it.
The Bellier logo is written in 17th Century printer typeface from Amsterdam during the Dutch ‘Golden Age,’ when the canal house accommodating our offices was built on the Singel around 1640, close to the Dam square at the heart of the city. Hence: “The Ram by the Dam.”
The Canal House on the Singel
The occupants of the canal house on the Singel have represented the key periods of Amsterdam’s history in the past four hundred years. Residents have included a Mr. De Brouwer who traded in wool with the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) and members of the Six family, earlier prominent patrons of Rembrandt, in the mid-19th Century. The German American composer Bernhard Heiden spent a few months lodging in the house while he was student in the 1930s, before he and his wife emigrated to Detroit to leave Nazi Germany in 1935.
Philip Mechanicus the Chronicler of Westerbork
In November 1937, Philip Mechanicus renowned foreign correspondent covering the rise of Stalin and the Nazis at the Algemeen Handelsblad, now the NRC newspaper, moved into a boarding room at Singel 266. Mechanicus was Jewish and sacked from his position at the newspaper after the Germans occupied Amsterdam in the Second World War. He was subsequently arrested on a tram in the city in September 1942 for not wearing the yellow Star of David and eventually sent to the Nazi Westerbork transit camp in the north of the Netherlands, where he recorded daily life in the camp in his diary In Depot. Mechanicus was deported from Westerbork to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where he was shot and murdered three days after arriving in October 1944.
In November 1937, Philip Mechanicus renowned foreign correspondent covering the rise of Stalin and the Nazis at the Algemeen Handelsblad, now the NRC newspaper, moved into a boarding room at Singel 266. Mechanicus was Jewish and sacked from his position at the newspaper after the Germans occupied Amsterdam in the Second World War. He was subsequently arrested on a tram in the city in September 1942 for not wearing the yellow Star of David and eventually sent to the Nazi Westerbork transit camp in the north of the Netherlands, where he recorded daily life in the camp in his diary In Depot. Mechanicus was deported from Westerbork to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where he was shot and murdered three days after arriving in October 1944.
“The front of Singel 266 in 1940 picturing the two young daughters and an employee of the notary Mr. K.L. Piccardt, whose office then occupied the raised ground floor of the house. Piccardt created false deeds of residence documents for around 50 Jewish residents of Amsterdam in 1942 and 1943 to hide their religious identities from the occupying Nazis. Some 42 of these people survived the war.”
Tinneke Wibout-Guilonard – Survivor of the Vucht ‘Bunker Tragedy’
Shortly after Mechanicus left the Singel, a relative of the notary family who’s offices occupied the front of the house, Tinneke Wibaut-Guilonard moved into ‘De Zaal’ or Herenkamer lodging room at the rear of the house he’d vacated. Tineke Guilonard was only a teenager when her father Pieter, deputy director of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, died in a plane crash in 1939. Four months earlier, he had refused to continue doing business with Germany after the Kristallnacht, a decision that made a great impression on his daughter.
Following in the footsteps of her father, Tineke came into the resistance against the Nazis when her Jewish fellow students had to leave The Amsterdams Lyceum in 1941. She and her classmates arranged hiding places, ration cards and fake identity cards. Not much later she joined the most effective Amsterdam armed resistance group CS-6 under her pseudonym Thea Beerens.
After she was betrayed in September 1943, Tineke ended up in Camp Vught, in the southern province of Brabant on 2 January 1944. Less than two weeks after her arrival, she lived through the so-called ‘bunker tragedy’, one of the darkest pages in the history of Camp Vught. Tineke was one of 74 women locked up in cell 115, and seventeen women in cell 117, as a punishment by the German guards. In Tineke’s cell, ten women died from suffocation. She later said: “Everything that came after, however terrible, that night was always worse.”
For Tineke, it was the beginning of a fifteen-month imprisonment in Vught and various camps in Nazi Germany. Close friendships with fellow prisoners kept her going. “They are friendships for a lifetime,” she wrote in a secret note from Vught.
Tineke survived the camps, and in 1947 she married her school friend and fellow resistance fighter Frank Wibaut. She became a fervent champion of emancipation and made an important contribution to the commemoration of the Second World War. She devoted herself intensively to providing support to children of war victims to whom she emphatically — and as one of the first who did so — also included the children of perpetrators. Furthermore, together with some fellow former prisoners, she was involved in the establishment of Camp Vught National Memorial. Among other decorations, she received a Yad Vashem award for her resistance work.
Shortly after Mechanicus left the Singel, a relative of the notary family who’s offices occupied the front of the house, Tinneke Wibaut-Guilonard moved into ‘De Zaal’ or Herenkamer lodging room at the rear of the house he’d vacated. Tineke Guilonard was only a teenager when her father Pieter, deputy director of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, died in a plane crash in 1939. Four months earlier, he had refused to continue doing business with Germany after the Kristallnacht, a decision that made a great impression on his daughter.
Following in the footsteps of her father, Tineke came into the resistance against the Nazis when her Jewish fellow students had to leave The Amsterdams Lyceum in 1941. She and her classmates arranged hiding places, ration cards and fake identity cards. Not much later she joined the most effective Amsterdam armed resistance group CS-6 under her pseudonym Thea Beerens.
After she was betrayed in September 1943, Tineke ended up in Camp Vught, in the southern province of Brabant on 2 January 1944. Less than two weeks after her arrival, she lived through the so-called ‘bunker tragedy’, one of the darkest pages in the history of Camp Vught. Tineke was one of 74 women locked up in cell 115, and seventeen women in cell 117, as a punishment by the German guards. In Tineke’s cell, ten women died from suffocation. She later said: “Everything that came after, however terrible, that night was always worse.”
For Tineke, it was the beginning of a fifteen-month imprisonment in Vught and various camps in Nazi Germany. Close friendships with fellow prisoners kept her going. “They are friendships for a lifetime,” she wrote in a secret note from Vught.
Tineke survived the camps, and in 1947 she married her school friend and fellow resistance fighter Frank Wibaut. She became a fervent champion of emancipation and made an important contribution to the commemoration of the Second World War. She devoted herself intensively to providing support to children of war victims to whom she emphatically — and as one of the first who did so — also included the children of perpetrators. Furthermore, together with some fellow former prisoners, she was involved in the establishment of Camp Vught National Memorial. Among other decorations, she received a Yad Vashem award for her resistance work.
Post-war History of Singel 266
In the post-war period, the house on the Singel was divided into notary and publishing offices, an antiquarian bookstore in the basement and rented studio apartments. In the 1990s, it was converted into two privately-owned apartments divided between the bel-étage, backhouse, and basement, and the upper four floors of the front of the house.
In 2010, the Bellier office moved into the basement of the house on the Singel from Amsterdam’s Java Island in the city’s old Eastern Harbours district. Bellier was originally established not far away on the Stuurmankade on Borneo Island.
In 2019, the upper apartment at Singel 266 was acquired by Bellier’s owners and after conversion became the company’s offices, restoring the entire building into single occupancy for the first time in 100 years. In January 2020, Bellier moved into its new offices, three months before the Covid-19 pandemic was officially declared.
Social Outreach
At FIGY Travel Foundation, we enable people from all walks of life to have the opportunity to make a positive life-changing impact in rural communities in the beautiful African country of Tanzania through volunteering programmes. Our programmes are the most affordable and sustainable way to immerse yourself in new cultures, connect with like-minded international volunteers and make a difference through work and travel.
As a non-profit foundation, FIGY Travel is dedicated to utilising all generated income to support the community work of our partner organisation, Stichting Support School fees. Our funds are directed towards a range of initiatives, including building and renovating schools, providing sanitary solutions, paying school fees for children, supporting teachers' salaries, empowering women, and building water wells, among others.
For more information visit figy.travel
ReachAnother Foundation is a volunteer-based non-profit organisation in the Netherlands and United States that promotes better access to healthcare services for medically underserved communities in Ethiopia. The foundation campaigns to raise funds for corrective surgeries on babies with hydrocephalus (water on the brain) and spina bifida in Ethiopia.
The foundation has a neurosurgical training programme. Since its inception in 2009, when there was only a single brain surgeon in Ethiopia, the foundation has trained 25 additional neurosurgeons in the country.
The primary cause of neural tube birth defects is a lack of sufficient folic acid (a B vitamin) in the diet of young mothers and the majority of cases can be prevented with food fortification. RAF is actively working on a food fortification programme in Ethiopia, notably through the addition of folic acid to salt in diets.
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For more information visit reachanother.org
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