William Blair restructures private-client groups

FWR Staff

19 June 2007

Investment bank draws lines across business units to unify wealth offerings. William Blair has shifted its private-client brokerage, its corporate and executive services group and its third-party investment platform William Blair Select to its wealth business under investment unit head Michelle Seitz. The Chicago-based firm says the restructuring enhances its ability to serve high-net-worth and ultra-affluent clients.

"This move brings together the full power and synergies of our multiple businesses, harnessing all of the firm's expertise -- including financial advisory and wealth management, and coordinating with investment banking and research -- and delivering them in a seamless fashion to the high-net-worth client and prospect," says John Ettelson, William Blair's president and CEO. "Michelle Seitz is well-suited to run this expanded wealth-management effort, and brings both strategic vision and a proven execution capability."

And an office in Liechtenstein

William Blair Private Investor -- now William Blair Private Advisors -- remains part of the firm's brokerage business, but it now comes under Seitz's purview in asset management. Similarly Corporate and Executive Services still lives its investment-banking division, but reports through to Seitz. The William Blair Select platform of outside managers had been in asset management already, but now its firmly part of the firm's wealth-management business.

Seitz has led William Blair's investment management division for six years already, as assets under management have gone from $11 billion to more than $47 billion. Her purview takes in institutional asset management, mutual funds, and private-wealth management.

William Blair, an employee-owned investment bank and asset manager, has been in the private-wealth business since 1935. This gives it a deep understanding of the needs of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, says Seitz. This legacy, along with the firm's independence and the new structure it has just given its private-client business makes it "better positioned to serve this sophisticated and important client base," she adds.

In addition to its headquarters in Chicago, William Blair has offices in Boston, Hartford, Conn., London, San Francisco, Shanghai, Tokyo, Zurich and Vaduz in Liechtenstein. -FWR