This publication recently interviewed Plurimi Capital, a private wealth management house set up by former Credit Suisse bankers who say their business focus is paying dividends.

Every time one reads a prediction about a “wave of consolidation” in wealth management, there are examples of managers at big-name brands who flee the nest to set up boutiques, which stops complete domination by a handful of mega-firms. Long may this continue.

A trend is one of managers at large banks who leave on amicable or at least civil terms to create their own firms while maintaining links with a previous employer, using it for example to provide custody and other forms of “financial plumbing”. (Not all departures are accompanied by well wishers and friendly messages, of course.) In this way, while a bank might lose some talented RMs, it retains a measure of revenue generation. This has happened over the past decade or more in the hedge fund industry as well, for example, at least until the credit crunch and rising regulatory costs pushed up barriers to entry.

So far at least, a new source of wealth boutiques remains that of breakaway teams from banks setting up new firms. They have new freedom and control and also lots of accumulated expertise.

Plurimi Capital, which is currently headquartered in London’s St James’s district, is a firm founded by former Credit Suisse bankers Francis Menassa (now head of business development) and Ramzy Rasamny, who is group chief executive. Both men hail from Lebanon originally and have the cosmopolitan outlook that comes with such a background. They have worked together in various roles for 17 years – long enough to figure out if they liked working together or not. And having started out to form Plurimi in 2007 just as markets were turning sour, they have expanded the firm to one with 30 staff. They oversee a total of $2 billion of client money; some of those clients came over with the men from Credit Suisse, while others have joined since. They say they operate an open architecture model, retaining Credit Suisse as a service provider, but not exclusively. It seems to have worked out fine for both sides.

Rasamny has over 20 years' experience in wealth management; in his pre-Plurimi life, he was managing director at Credit Suisse Private Client Services and co-head of the Middle East region for Credit Suisse London. Prior to joining Credit Suisse in 2001, he was vice president of global private clients at Merrill Lynch International Bank in London. In Menassa’s case, he has worked in the private client space for more than 15 years; he used to work with his co-founder at Plurimi at Credit Suisse Private Client Services in London, and like his colleague, also had a stint at Merrill Lynch International Private Bank.

This publication recently met with the men to ask about how their decision to go it alone has worked out.

This is a business where wealth managers are always trying to put some unique service proposition in front of clients. So it came as quite a jolt when the men made it clear that Plurimi can be distinguished as much by what it does not do, or stress as an offering, as by what it does.

“Our pitch in terms of wealth management to clients is that we are not asset allocators. Our business is ideas-driven and advisory. We don’t do discretionary wealth management,” Menassa said. (The firm’s licence enables it to trade discretionary in its asset management business. On the wealth management side, it is an advisory-only business.)

What is also notable about the firm, he says, is exactly how clients’ investment notions are put into action – structured products. “All our assets are structured investments of some sort,” Mensassa said, saying that each product is done on a bespoke basis, rather than bought off-the-shelf. The bespoke nature of the products means their terms can be altered – a degree of freedom not afforded to buyers of structured products in a mass market. (This is a feature worth stressing after structured products, in some cases, suffered serious losses in the 2008 financial crisis.)

“We have taken the concepts of `flexibility’ and `bespoke’ to another level,” Menassa said.

Another potential USP is that for all Plurimi is a firm that will serve high net worth and ultra high net worth clients, it is not hung up on segmentation issues, either by wealth size or geography, the men say. As far as they are concerned, much of this attempt to fit clients into a template is a waste of time and energy.

This is a business where getting a client on board takes a lot of time – it is not a fast turnaround operation; the men pointed out it typically takes a total of two years, from the initial introduction to a full client status, for a strong relationship to be built up. A lot of clients come from the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia.

Asset management move
Plurimi has started to create a separate asset management division; this is very much in response to client demand.

“There are a lot of good managers out there looking for a home and what they are looking for also is seed money,” said Menassa. So far, the asset management operation has a fixed income fund, equities fund and an aviation leasing fund. [They may look to other asset classes in the future].

And now Plurimi is in the process of moving to new offices. This is still a relatively young firm, but it has been forged amid the fires of the worst financial crisis, arguably, since the 1930s. As learning processes go, it has been steep, but so far at least, clients like what they see.