Stone & Youngberg will grow its private wealth business for high net-worth individuals and affluent families on the west coast of the US thi...

Stone & Youngberg will grow its private wealth business for high net-worth individuals and affluent families on the west coast of the US this year, and then work on building its national presence in 2008, Chuck Else, Stone & Youngberg managing director told WealthBriefing. Mr Else appointed Whitney Light, who has been with the firm since 2004, to vice president, investment consultant, in an effort to maintain client experience as the group expands. Traditionally an investment firm that made its name in fixed-income securities based in San Francisco, S&Y has offices now in Los Angeles, San Diego, New York, Chicago, Phoenix, Richmond Virginia, Annapolis Maryland, and Big Bear Lake California. It has a registered broker-dealer network with 45 advisors and around $4.5 billion in assets under advice, mainly sourced from clients in the San Francisco Bay area. The firm has around $100 million assets under management, according to Mr Else, which he said has tripled in the last year. He expected to grow this business to a quarter of a billion assets by the end of this year, based on a marketing and recruitment campaign the group has just begun in California. Within the next five years he expected assets under management to grow to $2 billion based on the building of a national sales presence. The first areas Mr Else expected to build up in 2008 included Chicago Illinois, and the greater Washington area.