Wilmington expands family-office footprint

FWR Staff

8 November 2005

Trust co. brings Grant Tani’s high-touch model to East Coast clients. Wilmington Trust says it’s set to put the family-office and business-management capabilities it acquired with its 2004 purchase of Grant Tani Barash & Altman on a national stage. With that in mind, the trust company has expanded its family-office service group to include an East Coast division under veteran wealth advisor Benjamin Ledyard.

Ledyard has been a senior private-client advisor and managing director with Wilmington for the past seven years. In 2004 and 2004 Worth magazine ranked him among the top 100 wealth advisors in the U.S. Wilmington Family Office, the group he now helps run, is part of the trust company’s wealth advisory business.

“Our goal is to be the wealth advisor of choice for high net worth individuals and families and the professionals who counsel them,” says Rodney Wood, head of Wilmington Trust's wealth advisory business. “Providing comprehensive family office services is integral to that strategy.”

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Customized family-office and business-management services – which Wilmington pegs as “among the fastest-growing areas of the wealth advisory industry” – typically include multi-generational wealth counseling, budgeting, tax planning, investment oversight, insurance-policy consulting and concierge services. Generally speaking such services are aimed at ultra-high-net-worth individuals with at least $30 million in investable assets.

Ledyard will report to Wood and work closely with Grant Tani’s Howard Altman and other principals of the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based firm.

“Ben brings exceptional wealth-planning and business-development skills to this position, as well as significant experience and success in advising ultra-high-net-worth clients,” says Altman. “We are excited to bring Wilmington Trust Family Office to the East Coast and are very pleased to do so under Ben's leadership.”

Wilmington paid an undisclosed price for 90% of Grant Tani early in 2004. At the time observers hailed the purchase as a high-profile springboard for Wilmington’s westward expansion. But some added that Wilmington would have to figure out how to get Grant Tani’s highly personalized approach to client service on a national platform in order to get the most for its money.

Wilmington plans to have an East Coast branch for its family office group up and running near its Wilmington, Del., headquarters sometime early in 2006.

With $38 billion under management at the end of September 2005, Wilmington is the 15th largest personal trust provider in the U.S. Outside Delaware, the trust company and its affiliates have offices in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Vermont. Overseas it has offices in London, Dublin, the Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands. It also has what it calls “other affiliates” in Milan. –FWR