Company Profiles
LGT Wealth Management Stresses Ownership Stability As It Expands

LGT Wealth Management has been through a lot of change, and has been building its footprint in the UK, such as in Scotland. WealthBriefing talks to one of its senior figures about how it is making progress.
In times of stress, certain qualities stand out. And at LGT Wealth
Management in the UK, being a part of a family-owned banking
group without the worry of gyrating company share prices or
competing agendas is a relief.
LGT Wealth Management – the business born out of the old Vestra
Wealth firm that was acquired in full by Liechtenstein’s LGT in
2020 – is in a good place because of the solidity of its owner,
and alignment of objectives, a senior figure told this
publication. (LGT initially took a stake in Vestra in 2016.
Vestra was created in 2008 by a breakaway team of UK wealth
managers at UBS.)
“The entrepreneurial nature has stayed within it [the UK
business]….from our perspective, what really helps us is the
family ownership,” Ben Snee, chief executive at LGT Wealth
Management, said in his offices in the City.
This is a growing business, and one that is seeking to take
advantage of a fragmented UK wealth management market where no
one single firm has a dominant share.
A few weeks ago, LGT Wealth Management began
the purchase of abrdn’s discretionary wealth management
business, which holds £6.1 billion in AuM, and will assume
the client relationships of that business when the deal closes.
The transaction includes the entire 140 staff, which will take
LGT Wealth Management’s employee total to around 650 people.
The firm will also take on the abrdn DFM offices in
Birmingham and Leeds. (It also has an office in London, Bristol,
Edinburgh and Jersey.)
When the deal is completed, LGT Wealth Management will expand its
AuM from around £22 billion, as of January this year, to more
than £28 billion. To put that figure into context, AuM was £6
billion in 2016. In five years’ time, the business wants to bump
that number up to £40 billion. The business has also been hiring.
In February it appointed Elliott O’Brien as head of
business transformation (formerly with HSBC Private
Banking). In December last year the firm appointed Sanjay
Rijhsinghani as chief investment officer. He succeeded Jonathan
Marriott, who retired after 40 years in the investment industry
and nine years at the company. It also made a number of
hires in Scotland, and opened its
first Scottish office, in Edinburgh, last June.
And, as Snee pointed out, the LGT presence in the business means
that the wealth firm has a bank with a balance sheet, and
can provide lending as part of the offering.
Much of the client base is entrepreneurial, and domestic, while
the firm also caters to a number of resident non-doms. To add to
this international dimension, LGT Wealth Management acquired a
team of Middle East-facing advisors from Credit Suisse about six
months ago.
LGT Wealth Management knows that its clients, often
entrepreneurs, like investing in areas such as private equity and
venture capital. As part of its model, clients can have access to
the offerings from LGT Capital Partners as well as those from LGT
Wealth Management’s Private Equity team, Snee said.
“We charge a flat fee – our structure ensures there is never
a financial incentive for client advisors to select one asset
class or product over another,” he said.
“We have got the wind in our sails and we are probably the
fastest organically growing business in the sector in the UK,” he
said.