After 38 years in the industry, a former Morgan Stanley managing director left the wirehouse to launch an independent RIA and private venture funds for ultra-wealthy clients.
Financial advisor Jim Martin chose Dynasty Financial Partners and Fidelity Family Office Services as vendors supporting the opening of Radnor, Pennsylvania-based Nordwand Capital, which has about $5 billion in client assets, the firms
The wealthiest of investors come to money managers
"For me, it was not something I really wanted to do," Martin said of the move to drop his brokerage license and start an independent registered investment advisor. He had been considering the change for about 10 years before carrying it out with Dynasty's help.
"It was something I had to do to be able to serve the unique clients that I have," Martin added. "The RIA business has grown up a lot over the past decade."
Representatives for Morgan Stanley didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Certain members of Martin's previous team at Morgan Stanley declined to follow him to the new firm, he noted. A listing of his former team's assets by
Wirehouses "usually have product specialists in all kinds of sophisticated areas," but the lure of independence draws many of their biggest advisors and teams away, said recruiter Mark Elzweig.
"One of the attractions of independence is essentially to be able to have flexibility both in choosing your custodian and just having a wider array of customized choices for your clients," Elzweig said. "If you want to do something that's really off the beaten path, that's probably not the right venue for that."
At least 15 RIAs out of the 48 with 319 advisors in platform provider Dynasty's network have $1 billion in client assets or more,
"It's clear the team made this decision because it's in the best interest of their clients," Dynasty CEO Shirl Penney said in a statement about Nordwand. "This is one of the largest fully independent firms launching in 2022 and it shows the continuation of the trend of the most successful financial advisors and investment professionals moving toward full independence."
In addition to Martin, the Nordwand team includes Chief Operating Officer Christopher Boyle, Head of Listed Strategies Ted Brooks and senior associates Connor Martin and Daniel Kane. Boyle and Kane came over from Morgan Stanley, while Martin had been with private investment firm Cambridge Associates and Brooks joined the company from electric vehicle charging network EVgo. Martin's nearly four decades in the industry includes prior tenures with Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, brokerage firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and Drexel Burnham Lambert, according to SEC records.
The Nordwand team's new primary RIA received its SEC registration on Sept. 2, and a second entity for its investing arm has filed preliminary papers for registration, according to Martin. The structure enables the team to offer its own pooled investment vehicles. Nordwand would be open to the idea of offering its funds to other RIAs within or outside Dynasty's network, he said.
"We feel the two and 20 structure is kind of broken a bit," he said, referring to the industry's traditional private fund fee asking for 2% of a client's assets and a 20% share of the profits. "Our feeling is, they're more interested in the return on their money than the return on our money."
