But the family-wealth firm says the timing hinges on getting good staffers. Pitcairn Financial Group says it wants to establish a national presence in the U.S. The Jenkintown, Pa.-based multi-family office took a step in that direction last month, when it opened an office in Tysons Corner, Va.; its third office overall and its first outside Pennsylvania. But the firm says finding talent is its greatest barrier to growth.

Organic

"Our plan is have a national footprint with six or eight offices," says Leslie Voth, Pitcairn's director of wealth management services. But she adds that the location of those offices - and the timetable for expansion - is more likely to be a function of finding the people to man them rather than a strict adherence to a geographic plan.

"We're interested in organic growth, not [growth] by [lifting out] teams and not by acquisition," says Voth. "We're looking for professionals who want to grow in a multi-family office."

Though Voth says that's a tall order by and large, she adds that Pitcairn has made some good hires in recent months. The firm recruited Coe Magruder, a 22-year veteran of UBS Wealth Management and former head of the Swiss bank's Washington, D.C., private-client offices, to run its own D.C.-area business out of Tysons Corner. He's seconded by Howard Zaritsky, an estate-planning attorney who came out of retirement to join Pitcairn.

In another recent hire, Pitcairn brought aboard former SEI Wealth Network managing director Rebecca Meyer to run family-wealth services from the firm's headquarters in Jenkintown.

Old John

Although Pitcairn, a family-owned multi-family office that caters to families with at least $5 million in financial assets, says that making a national name for itself by opening new offices is important to its long-term growth plans, it has no desire to grow by any means. And, so far at least, this slow-but-steady pace has served the firm fairly well.

Pitcairn started out early in the last century as the office of the John Pitcairn family, a Scottish immigrant who got rich manufacturing plate glass just as architects where starting to make glass a vital element of skyscraper construction.

In 1987 a family rift put an end to the old Pitcairn family office and led to the creation, by some of those family members, of Pitcairn Trust, an avowed multi-family office that became Pitcairn Financial Group in 2005. The Pitcairn family is still the firm's sole owners - and principal clients: as of about 30 months ago 92 of its 352 individual clients could trace their lineage to Scottish John.

Pitcairn administers about $3.2 billion in client assets, about half of which it manages in house. In addition to its Jenkintown base and the new office in Northern Virginia, Pitcairn has an office in St. David's, Pa., which it opened in 2004. -FWR

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