Climateer Investing: "Family offices are snapping up talent from private-equity firms and elite wealth managers"

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

"Family offices are snapping up talent from private-equity firms and elite wealth managers"

Pay, autonomy and less of the concierge stuff and snapping is easy.

From Business Insider, November 3:

As wealth has concentrated among the ultra-rich, family offices' investing ambitions and capabilities are looking more like those of traditional money managers.
Many family offices haven't stopped hiring investing talent in recent months, recruiters told Business Insider.
Nearly every recruiter we interviewed from leading search firms said family offices have sought out more employees from the private-equity industry as they increasingly execute direct investments.
Family offices are also looking for more in-house legal talent to help them navigate changes in tax policy if Joe Biden wins the US presidential election, some said.

Many banks and asset managers are slowing hiring or laying off employees during the pandemic. Or both. But family offices, the hush-hush, loosely regulated wealth managers for the world's richest clans, are outliers.
After pausing searches for brief periods earlier this year, many have resumed hiring for largely investment roles in recent months, six recruiters said in interviews with Business Insider.
They're looking in many cases to draw in talent from private equity firms and elite wealth managers, recruiters said, and continuing to form operations that resemble established institutions with sophisticated capabilities.
"Given the rising number of layoffs at financial institutions, which are family offices' favorite feeding ground for recruitment, this has led to a widening pool of available and skilled talent for family offices to choose from," Rebecca Gooch, director of research at Campden Wealth, said in an email.
As the sheer amount of wealth has concentrated among the ultra-rich in the US during the decade-long bull market, family offices have become much more ambitious and sophisticated than they once were.
Campden Research estimated in 2019 that there are 7,300 family offices that cater to a single family worldwide — more than a third of which are located in North America — overseeing $5.9 trillion in assets under management.
Because of family offices' secretive nature, determining their precise sizes can be difficult. Those seeking out more complex capabilities can range widely, from overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars to many billions. In a survey Fidelity conducted last year of 111 US-based family offices, the average respondent's net worth was $1.6 billion.
Seeking out more private markets talent
Sarah Burley Reid, a partner at Spencer Stuart who co-heads the firm's global private wealth management practice, has seen an uptick in family offices seeking out talent from the world of private equity and private credit, and those looking for opportunities in uncorrelated areas of the market.
"In the old days, the family office leader could be somebody who maybe grew up at a family company. Nowadays the family office talent pool is more highly developed," Burley Reid, who is based in New York, said.
In one recent search, a family office was looking for a private investor with experience in the industrial sector, as that's where the family had made its money. It's "where their comfort lies," she said, and they were looking for someone "constantly scanning for investment opportunities there."
Derek Braddock, co-founder of New York- and Boston-based asset management-focused executive search firm BraddockMatthews said a number of searches his firm has conducted in recent years have been for families' first ever chief investment officer....

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If interested see also:
June 2019
"Superyachts, Mixing Drinks: The Truth About Family Office Jobs"
December 2017
"Family Offices as the Apex Of the New Butler Class"
March 2014
Family Office/Outside Managers Not Quite Cutting It? Maybe What You Need Is A Family Bank