There is a cluster of wealth managers in the UK and other countries, such as Switzerland, whose regulatory status allows them to serve high net worth US expats.

MASECO Private Wealth, a UK-based firm specializing in serving expat US clients, has appointed former Mediolanum asset management figure Damian Barry as chief investment officer.

He takes over from the previous CIO who left last year.

With a career spanning more than 25 years, Barry was the head of multi-asset management for Mediolanum. Before this, he ran multi-asset portfolios for Seven Investment Management in the UK. He has also run portfolios at Threadneedle and Russell Investments for a wide range of institutional, high net worth individuals and retail clients. 

During his time at Russell Investments, Damian lived in Seattle, managing portfolios for US clients. He is a CFA charterholder and has a Bcomm from UCC.

“This is an important appointment for us and is key in our ambition to grow and develop our market share. Damian will play a fundamental role in helping us shape the future of MASECO,” James Sellon, co-founder and managing partner, MASECO, said. 

MASECO, which caters for high net worth and ultra-HNW US and global clients, was formed in 2008 by a team of US expats from Citigroup in London.

When the business was born, the UK non-domicile tax rules were changing (meaning that American and other non-domiciled clients would need to pay UK taxes in future on their global assets). Pressures on US expats intensified when the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) was enacted by the Obama administration in 2010. A number of large banks, such as HSBC and Deutsche Bank, ceased serving US expats as they were seen as unprofitable clients carrying too high a compliance burden. The difficulties arose because the US, unlike almost all other major nations, taxes its citizens on a worldwide rather than a territorial basis. A number of other firms, such as London & Capital, Royal Bank of Canada and Shard Capital, now operate in this space.

MASECO has grown assets to more than £2.6 billion ($3.39 billion).