Morgan Stanley's family wealth directors plan multi-generational wealth transfer, including venture and private equity holdings.

[01:46]

"Well, yes, as a family wealth director who specializes in ultra high net worth and high net worth assignments, I get to see just about anything you can think of related to managing money or multi-generational wealth transfer, pre-liquidity events, whether it's uh ipo, merger, divorce, real estate transaction,"

[04:03]

"We have teams that help to coach you through the process of preparing for pre-ipo or merger, and the investment bank is really interested in anything 50 million and up. Yeah, call it 35 or 40 if. If you're not at 50, we still want to look at"

[07:04]

"If you need work on your yacht, if you want to alone on your fine artwork, if you want advisory opinions on the acquisitions you're going to make, it's like a concierge service to support family offices and the advisors that work with the family offices"

Full transcript

Hello everybody. My name is richard c wilson, the founder of the family office club, and today I have with me my friend, bill atha from morgan stanley. Hi, bill, how are you? I'm doing terrific. Thank you for having me join me today. Great and uh.

Most people are familiar with morgan stanley at a high level. They're probably not aware of everything you do or the depth of some of your divisions, but how would you kind of summarize either your approach or your role there, morgan stanley, and how you see them functioning with clients? Well, first, morgan stanley is a asset manager and bank, having more than four trillion dollars now with the closing of our e-trade and e-to-advanced transactions, doing investment, banking, alternative investments, largest platform in the world, esg, largest platform in the world, or country insurance and annuities. I'm a family wealth director.

There are 250 family wealth directors. I'm a family office specialist and the point person and partner for family office club. We are very excited now to be heading into our second year as a provider of services for family office club, the family offices and its members. Great, and I know that, um, you have a deep knowledge, like we're just catching up for 30 minutes, and all of the trust in the state and tax strategies you know and we're going to be interviewing you for our tax strategies summit coming up.

So obviously looking forward to that, yeah and uh, we're looking forward to having you there. But obviously, a foot in the door with clients, a way to add early value is trust, estate planning, tax insights, um, is there anything else top of mind that you found family offices consistently value or engage you to get access to a certain area of expertise or benefits? Well, yes, as a family wealth director who specializes in ultra high net worth and high net worth assignments, I get to see just about anything you can think of related to managing money or multi-generational wealth transfer, pre-liquidity events, whether it's uh ipo, merger, divorce, real estate transaction, and also providing products and strategies, um, a lot of our alternative investments, um, esg, but more particularly the use of our risk management software and our wealth strategies analysis software. Uh, we believe we're the only ones that can manage um, through the software, looking at multi-generational wealth transfer and planning, for you know the entire state, but particularly what makes us unique is venture capital and private equity planning, which is right in the wheelhouse of what you do right and when you're looking at your value-add process as a firm or as a team, an organization.

Obviously you can help with planning pre-exit, you can help with the tax, trust and estate planning. You know of a strong investment banking division that's one of the the largest in the country. What else would you say is your value-add process? Or maybe something that's not not known commonly about that process? Well, maybe three other areas would be: uh, the banking which you, you mentioned.

We do commercial and residential, uh, banking besides checking in an american express guard, uh and uh, the bigger the deal the better. We like to be involved. We don't do lending um to construction or land, uh, but anything that's built um, you know we will take a look at the executive financial services group. The largest team in the country, about 27 billion, is in palo alto and in addition, with our purchase a couple of years ago, solium, now called shareworks.

We also are the largest manager of private equity stock. If you have a venture capital or pe that's growing, we'll provide the software for you to track your original shares, a shares, b shares, other. We have teams that help to coach you through the process of preparing for pre-ipo or merger, and the investment bank is really interested in anything 50 million and up. Yeah, call it 35 or 40 if.

If you're not at 50, we still want to look at because we might be able to assist you getting there. We still do about 80 to 90 of all ipo transactions in the country. Um, so I think the, the banking, the uh efs, uh, definitely makes us uh different. And, uh, when you say 50 million, is that valuation or is that revenue per year evaluation?

Uh, valuation? Uh, you know, since you mentioned that, I will say that a lot of the venture capital and pe, uh people coming to try and pitch to the family offices with you. They will approach us and say, morgan stanley, can you put some money with us? And the answer is no. As a result of dodd-frank 2010, uh, banks can no longer do proprietary trading.

But, uh, if you've got five million ebitda, a three-year track record, we have funds that do want to take a look and lend to you. Uh, and also, if you've got 500 million and a three-year track record in your funds, you can't approach our consulting group to try and get on our platform, and I think that would be helpful for everyone to know. Right, yeah, and so as well. And what would be the number one due diligence question that an investor could ask a firm like yours?

But because they're not you, maybe they don't know to ask that really sharp question? Well, my role at morgan stanley is unique. Um, my job is to field all uh inquiries and, whether I provide the solution with my team or another team, my team is to research whatever you need and then line up the particular strategies, disciplines or personnel on our platform to give you the best solution. We're trying to make it so, especially in the family office space.

If you want to approach us with a question, you get good advice, know that you've got a good, solid team studying what you have and that once the solution is provided, it's not just the local team in your area, it could be a team far afield but specialized to providing you just that solution. I would like to mention that third thing that made us different is the family office resource group. Inside that group are about eight trusted states attorneys, 10 analysts that do that, wealth strategies analysis software, in addition to the family wealth directors who are the others that have access to that software and our lifestyle service management, headed by a really terrific team. If you need to get a doctor, a second opinion, uh, our outside service, pinnacle care, can help advise you on that.

If you want to get extra time, least on your jet, if you want to get a jet. If you need work on your yacht, if you want to alone on your fine artwork, if you want advisory opinions on the acquisitions you're going to make, it's like a concierge service to support family offices and the advisors that work with the family offices and that's available, of course, to everybody at um, the family office club, typically, uh, we want 10 million in assets on the platform to engage those services if you wanted someone to be paying your bills while you're going around the world. Uh, they're really looking for something at 100 million up on the platform because most of those assignments, um have been typically two and three-year assignments. Right, yeah, it makes sense.

Um, that's great. And what is? Uh, to finish up here, a hundred thousand dollar piece of advice you could leave us with for investors or an area of wealth management or related to investments in general. Well, uh, I love the hundred thousand dollar question. People often ask me, bill, what's your minimum? And I jokingly say that the client's nice.

We really just want to take a look at whatever you have. If you have a need and pri try and provide a solution. Uh, the answer, generally speaking, because I am a portfolio manager, is: it depends on whether it's a specific assignment, if it's a slot, if it's a product, if it's to fit into a strategy. Uh, the answer is to try and give you the right answer for whatever.

Whatever it is that you're trying to do, uh, we have the largest investment platform with the most opportunities. In specific, if you said what would be the most appropriate thing for the family office club, I would say alternative investments and esg. We've got single products with no minimums. We've got portfolios with no minimums. If you wanted to have an individually built portfolio, it would be 25 million minimum for each of those assignments, esg and alternatives.

But right now, the opportunities for a accredited investor or a qualified purchaser, one million or five million, is really in the esg and alternative space and alternatives. In 2018 and 2019, you didn't have the ability to have your money called fast enough to be invested. Today it's a very advantageous uh environment. You're seeing uh the callings um advancing very, very quickly and money being called.

So if you had 100,000, I think I would give us a call. 70 of what we have, the largest esg platform in the world, is only available to uh clients of morgan stanley, great, awesome. And what would be the best way for somebody to get in touch with you. Would you prefer email or phone or any of the above?

Uh, people, uh, call my mobile all the time because most of us are working remotely, 92 percent of morgan stanley is working remotely still, and probably bill will be until the fourth quarter this year, at least on current estimate, um, but email or phone me, um, I believe everyone knows how to get a hold of me at family office club. Great, great, yes, thank you. If anyone does need help on that, they can reach out to me directly or reach out to jennifer on our team. You can reach our team at clients at familyoffices.com and we'll get you in touch with bill.

We worked with him closely and gotten to know him well over the past couple of years. So thank you, bill, for your time here today and we look forward to having you with us again soon for our tax summit. Happy new year, everybody, and we'll see you soon. Bye-bye, take care, bye.