AlTi Tiedemann Global has bet that its decision to become publicly traded on the Nasdaq will boost its efforts to attract and retain top talent in wealth management.
“As the company matures and the equity story becomes more widely known, we think the fact that we’re public, have a liquid stock, and the fact that we’re global and growing will all be attractive attributes for recruiting and retaining employees and advisers to the business, as well as for doing M&A,” Kevin Moran, president and COO of AlTi Tiedemann Global, told Crain Currency. The firm now totals around 480 employees.
“In terms of how we motivate and align, it’s a people business,” Moran said. “Being public allows us to have widespread equity ownership across the employee base, which we think is important for our culture and aligning our employees with the clients.
“Having employees think of themselves as shareholders is really important for us culturally and how we interact with our clients. Privately, as businesses grow, it becomes harder to have widespread employee ownership because the businesses become too expensive.”
In May, Campden Wealth and AlTi released a study that found 70% of family offices have difficulty recruiting new talent, and 65% have concerns about staff retention.
The company now known as AlTi Tiedemann Global was formed after a 2021 combination deal between Tiedemann Group, Alvarium Investments Ltd. and Cartesian Growth Corp.
Since debuting to the public in January 2023, AlTi Global’s stock has decreased roughly 60% in value to around $4 per share. The firm manages or advises on over $70 billion in global assets as it provides multi-family-office services to ultra-high-net-worth clients and multi-gen families.
Carl Tiedemann, the father of current CEO Michael Tiedemann, was an accomplished Wall Street executive who started Tiedemann Investment Group in the early 1980s. Being public, Moran said, “allowed us to show that we’re a permanent institute.”
“We’re in the business of really advising people with respect to multi-generational wealth. Ideally, you're working with several generations within a family,” he said. “So we always wanted to give clients the confidence that this is a firm that will be here for their children, their grandchildren for years to come.”
Earlier this year, Chicago-based Constellation Wealth Capital and Munich-based Allianz X agreed to invest up to $450 million in AlTi Global, which thereafter acquired New York-based East End Advisors in April and the Minneapolis-based family office Envoi in May to bolster its Midwest presence.
Expanding into emerging ultra-high-net-worth markets across the globe is a priority for AlTi, which bought the Singapore-based AL Wealth Partners last year and has operations in Hong Kong.
“There's an enormous amount of wealth being created in the United States,” Moran said. “But certainly in places like Asia, [and] I think over time places like India, Africa, South America will be huge markets for a firm like ourselves. So we’re just extremely excited about the future of the business."