Hightower has made a strategic investment in Grant Tani Barsh & Altman, a business management firm in Los Angeles. Unlike Hightower’s typical deals, where it acquires registered investment advisory firms, it helps build the firm into a business management vertical, bringing the personal chief financial officer services of Grant Tani Barash and Altman to Hightower Advisors. .
“Most of our deals are on the scale of RIA, which means advisory, asset, on the client platform,” Hightower CEO Bob Oros said in an exclusive interview. “Our strategic investment in Grant Tani Barash and Altman is truly an investment in adding new capabilities for our advisors and their clients.”
Those personal CFO services include bookkeeping and accounting, bill payment, tax preparation and other concierge financial management capabilities, Hightower said.
Grant Tani Barash and Altman will continue to operate independently and will take advantage of Hightower’s middle and back-office services. Their offering will also be integrated into Hightower’s suite of services.
“We will be building a vertical within the firm to serve Hightower Advisors’ ultra-high-net-worth clients, so it’s really taking advantage of everything they already do for their niche, And offer it to a whole new set of customers that they can serve,” Oros said.
Forty percent of Hightower’s wealth comes from families with $15 million or more. As of December 31, 2021, Hightower had $144 billion in assets under administration and $117.8 billion in assets under management. Oros expects the firm to continue to grow in the ultra-high-net-worth segment.
This acquisition adds to HighTower’s existing services for ultra-high-net-worth clients, including its tax and estate planning capabilities, through an investment in Wellspring Associates in April 2020. Hightower is also working on providing individual trust services and has received conditional approval to convert the Texas-based trust company into a national chartered trust company this summer.
“It fits in very well with all of those capabilities to be able to meet the needs of the ultra-high-net-worth overall and really bring a true end-to-end family office type of model.” are,” Oros said.
Grant Tani Barsh & Altman, which was founded in 1992, has 80 employees bringing these services to their existing customers. The firm specializes in serving the entertainment industry including actors, actresses, directors and producers.
The firms would not disclose the terms of the deal, except if it involved a mix of cash and equity.
