Our US correspondent takes a deep dive into developments at AlTi Global – or AlTi Tiedemann – the transatlantic wealth management house that recently saw the sudden exit of its CEO. The firm has its admirers as well as those who think strategy must change course.

(An earlier version of this article appeared first in Family Wealth Report, sister news service to this one. AITI Global operates in a number of jurisdictions, such as Germany, Singapore and the UK. Its expansion speaks to the global nature of certain wealth management organisations. While the specifics of this analysis may be mostly focused on the US, the implications are not.)

Who will blink first?

Call it a battle of wills between a beleaguered financial services firm holding out for a premium price and opportunistic private equity firms looking for a bargain.

Despite having hired JP Morgan nine months ago, wealth and asset manager AlTi Global, hasn’t been able to attract a buyer, its stock is thinly traded, poorly covered and languishing at around 64 per cent below its 2023 initial offering price of $10, its CEO and co-founder departed abruptly in March and the company’s largest shareholder may be losing patience with the status quo.

What’s holding up a potential sale for all or parts of AlTi Global to be taken private is a yawning gap of around $600 million or more between how private equity firms are valuing the company and the premium asking price AlTi management is demanding, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Since forming a special committee of independent directors last year to consider “indications of interest” in the firm and “assess potential strategic options,” AlTi has rebuffed overtures from Corient and other large strategic RIA acquirers.

Offers too low or price too high?
AlTi, which has $50 billion in assets under management and $93 billion in assets under advisement, has not yet received a proposal “that it believes encapsulates the long-term value of the business,” interim CEO Nancy Curtin (whom we interviewed in January) said on an earnings call in March. 

Potential buyers say AlTi’s asking price is too high – and unrealistic. “There’s a mathematical disparity between what a private equity sponsor would pay for a reasonable multiple on AlTi’s cash flow and its market cap and enterprise value,” according to one consultant who has examined AlTi’s financials. “That price is going to be significantly lower than [AlTi’s] expectations.”

Asked about the disparity in valuation assessments, an AlTi spokesperson said the company couldn’t comment on market speculation.

“AlTi is a very complicated business to buy”
In addition to the valuation gap, the standoff between buyer and seller centres on AlTi’s complex capital structure and the strategic uncertainty surrounding the firm.

“AlTi is a very complicated business to buy,” Eric Amar, CEO of Accelerated Wealth Partners, an RIA investor told this news service. “It has a high quality wealth management business, but as a public company formed as a SPAC with an international business, asset management and preferred equity owned by Allianz and Constellation, it has an extremely complex business structure. It’s like taking the complexity of a private RIA transaction and multiplying by 100.”

AlTi Global was formed by a 2021 merger of the US RIA Tiedemann Advisors, British asset manager Alvarium Investments and special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Cartesian Growth Corp. Then known as Alvarium Tiedemann Holdings, the firm changed its name when it went public in January 2023.

Allianz and Constellation
The German insurance company Allianz became AlTi’s largest shareholder in 2024, partnering with RIA minority investor Constellation Wealth Capital to assemble a combined stake worth around $450 million.

Allianz’s large, structured investment includes common stock (it holds 24 per cent), preferred stock and warrants to purchase five million shares of Class A common stock at an exercise price of $7.40 per share. In March Allianz filed an amended Schedule 13D with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating it may be interested in buying the company.

Allianz declined to comment, but observers believe that the German company’s next move will be to go a long way towards deciding AlTi’s future. “AlTi’s driving the bus,” said one insider.

Stakes owned by Constellation, the investing firm headed by Karl Heckenberg, include common shares, preferred shares, payment-in-kind (PIK) securities and warrants to purchase two million shares of common stock at $7.40 a share. “Karl always has a lot of protection,” one RIA executive said. Constellation declined to comment.

IlWaddi Holdings, owned by a member of the Qatari royal family, which uses Geller Advisors as its US business address, holds the second largest percentage of AlTi’s common stock at just over 16 per cent. Advisors and other employees and investors in AlTi’s legacy firms, including former CEO Michael Tiedemann, also own a large block of shares.

Buyers’ questions
Potential buyers point to AlTi’s unwieldly capital structure and stock dilution and raise questions about the company’s profitability, management, strategic decisions, asset flows, advisor morale and inorganic growth. 

Industry executives (especially rivals) are particularly critical of what they describe as management missteps, including faulty leadership, going public in a SPAC structure, an ill-timed IPO, aggressive international acquisitions and dragging out sales talks for more than nine months. “It’s a case study in what not to do,” one veteran industry executive said. 

AlTi acknowledges that it has “a management team that has limited experience managing a public company” in its annual report’s “risk factors,” as well as having potentially “greater difficulties in managing and staffing foreign operations.”

Robert Weeber, president of AlTi’s international business, left the company earlier this year and Michael Tiedemann’s tenure as CEO was terminated “without cause” in late March. (See coverage of events here.)

Tiedemann and Curtin
Tiedemann subsequently filed a Schedule 13D indicating that he was exploring a bid to buy AlTi and take it private. In a Schedule 14A proxy statement filed  on 1 May, AlTi agreed to pay Tiedemann severance and benefits “including certain equity award acceleration and vesting,” subject to his employment agreement. Tiedemann did not respond to a request for comment.

Curtin “is expected to have a term of one year” at a base annual salary of $600,000 with a guaranteed bonus of $740,000 for fiscal year 2026, according to the proxy statement. The 68-year old Curtin, who had been  AlTi’s global CIO and previously headed investments for asset manager Alvarium, will also receive $700,000 for becoming interim CEO, according to the proxy. Meanwhile, AlTi is conducting an active CEO search and Curtin is a candidate, an AlTi spokesperson said.

AlTi’s “strong position”
Despite the management upheaval and uncertainty surrounding the firm, AlTi does have boosters.

Raymond James gave the company a “strong buy” rating in April, setting a target price of $9 a share, reiterating its belief that AlTi “is in a strong position to accelerate growth and scale.” Research analyst Wilma Burdis cited AlTi’s UHNW focus, global platform and average client size of approximately $50 million.

The company’s American wealth management operations drew praise from domestic competitors. “Their US business and advisors are world class,” said Pathstone CEO Matt Fleissig. “They’ve been one of our strongest competitors.” Similarly, Brian Hughes, president of Eton Advisors Group, described AlTi as a “formidable” competitor in the US UHNW and family office markets.

AlTi’s global ambitions have been a point of pride. It operates in nine countries, acquiring wealth management firms in Europe, Asia, and most recently the heavyweight €14 billion ($16.5 billion) German multi-family office Kontora. In April 2024, it bought New York-headquartered East End Advisors, a firm with about $5.6 billion in AuM. In May 2024, AITi snapped up Singapore’s AL Wealth Partners.

TIG, the company’s asset management arm, runs an internally managed fund with a largely institutional base and has GP (General Partner) stakes in three external alternative asset managed funds. 

AlTi has also cleaned up its balance sheet by discontinuing its international real estate holdings and expects that zero-based budgeting will significantly reduce costs this year. As a result, the company “continues to gain operational efficiency,” according to Raymond James’ Burdis.

“The business would demand a premium multiple”
A sale to take AlTi private would “eliminate the valuation overhang associated with limited public float and micro-cap status [and] support a valuation that more appropriately reflects AlTi’s underlying earnings potential,” Burdis said in January. “We think the business would demand a premium multiple and favourable terms to take the company private.”

For its part, AlTi touts what it calls its “unique position in the ultra-high net worth space with a global platform” and claims that it’s in no rush to sell anything.

“Our clients think in generations not quarters,” said a spokesperson. “This process has always been guided by delivering the strongest possible outcomes for clients over the long term, and supporting ongoing investment in our talent, client service and differentiated capabilities, alongside maximising value for shareholders.”

Stalemate
Whether AlTi’s management feels pressure to get a deal done or not, discussions between its special committee and acquisitive suiters appear to be at an impasse.

“I think Alti’s complex cap structure is a large contributor to the sizeable bid/ask spread,” said one person familiar with the discussions. “It appears that the gap isn’t just a disagreement over price, it’s that sellers are valuing AlTi as a scaled, high-growth global platform while buyers are pricing it as a complex, underperforming business with a heavy capital structure, and those views can differ by hundreds of millions of dollars.”

In an era of RIA consolidation, AlTi might be seen as a target for a mega-merger, said Philip Bianchi, founder of nFleXion Capital Partners.

“But the asset would need to be pristine, and there’s a higher bar for taking a public company private than there is for a private to private transaction.” Bianchi said. “In this case you have a gap between the bid and the ask price, a price floor as a public company, less float and a company that’s relatively illiquid with different trading dynamics.”

Another challenge may be untangling AlTi’s various businesses, said Amar, who spent nine years as a senior executive at Focus Financial Partners, before starting Accelerating Wealth Partners in 2024. “I think a buyer would either have to have a very low price or a deep knowledge of the business,” he said. “It would be a lot of work for what you get out of it.”

Conflicting valuations
The private equity camp argues that AlTi’s asking price based on its market cap of approximately $410 million, plus a premium for shareholders and other obligations isn’t viable in the current market. A valuation based on the company’s wealth management cash flow and a multiple between nine and 13 times EBITDA leaves an unbridgeable gap that may exceed $600 million.

Buyer and seller have different valuation perspectives, of course, and use different multiples. While Raymond James’ “bear case” for AlTi is an EBITDA multiple as low as five, on a “sum-of-the-parts basis,” it values the asset management business a 12X multiple and the wealth business a 20X multiple “both in line with comparable businesses.”

“Someone is going to have to swallow hard”
AlTi’s first quarter earnings results that will be made public at market close [yesterday] this afternoon will be the next shoe to drop. 

Adjusted EBITDA in 2025 was a bright spot, rising 45 per cent from 2024 to $35 million. The company’s total revenue increased 25 per cent to $255 million compared with 2024, but there was a total operating income loss of  $74 million last year and a net income loss of nearly $120 million, 15 per cent more than the previous year. 

If a deal to take the company private is struck, there will almost surely be a price discount. “It’s not a very aligned situation,” said one industry CEO familiar with the situation. “Someone is going to have to swallow hard, take a writedown and not get the return they were looking for. If they don’t and continue to sit on this longer, there will be further risk impairment.”

As private equity sees it, “the solution is for the parties that have meaningful investments in the company to sit down with a fresh source of capital and recognise that the expectations that they've had to date are not realistic,” said one insider. 

“They need to recut a deal where fresh capital comes in to rejuvenate the business. The existing investors either decide to take a loss and leave or roll with the new capital and push their return horizon to the next exit. When the new source of capital exits, these folks will be able to then exit with them with a positive return.”

Future scenarios
This scenario has drawn comparisons to PE firms Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) and Stone Point Capital taking Focus Financial private in 2023 after Focus’ disappointing time as a public company. Under CD&R’s non-nonsense direction, the RIA began restructuring towards a more centralised business model with an eye to an eventual exit by CD&R at a nice multiple arbitrage premium.

Other scenarios include another bid from a mega-RIA following Corient’s failed attempt, a possible management buyout or an initiative launched by major shareholders Allianz or Constellation or former CEO Michael Tiedemann, although industry observers question whether Tiedemann could raise enough capital to make that a reality.

An activist investor may also swoop in, as happened when Envestnet was similarly floundering as a public company and activist hedge fund Impactive Capital bought in and demanded a management shakeup, facilitating an eventual sale to private equity acquirer Bain Capital.

In the end, Bianchi thinks AlTi  will “most likely” stay public. “It’s a resilient  business in a good market segment,” he explained. “Now there’s stability at the helm with Nancy Curtin. Management can make a case the business will turn around.”

“Problems don’t get better with time,” countered the veteran CEO. “I think a private equity firm’s distressed fund that understands high risk will come in at the right price. But whatever happens, it’s unlikely that AlTi will be in the same shape two years from now.”