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 , 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 , 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 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 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.

, 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 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.”