GenSpring Family Offices LLC is expanding the role and reach of its regional headquarters in Costa Mesa as it bolsters its service to the wealthy in California and the rest of the West.
The Palm Beach, Fla.-based multifamily office opened a location in Los Angeles last month, and brought into its fold a wealth-management team in San Francisco that had been a separate entity under its affiliate, SunTrust Banks Inc.
Such moves, along with boosting staff at a smaller office in Minnesota, mean expanded responsibilities for Patricia Soldano, GenSpring’s Western region chairman.
“The firm has confidence that I know how to run this business,” she said. “I find it’s a great compliment. The firm has made a conscious effort in putting capital and resources into the California market. Now I have an office with some very senior advisers. Just the number of people to oversee, as well as the opportunities and resources, has expanded.”
GenSpring’s Western region now has four offices and 12 advisers who manage the assets of 35 high net-worth families.
Firmwide, GenSpring manages about
$13 billion in client assets and has some 350 client families throughout the U.S., each with more than $25 million in net worth.
It provides a range of finance-related services for its client families, including investment management, wealth transfers between generations, taxes, expense management, trusts and financial education.
California Appeal
California has been a key market for GenSpring, and Chief Executive Thomas Carroll has been working toward “driving additional capital infusion and momentum in California,” Soldano said, adding that the high net-worth population in the state is among the highest in the country.
“Tom wants to spend as much time as he can here helping us grow in this market,” Soldano said. “That speaks volumes about the firm’s and his commitment.”
Carroll became chief executive of GenSpring in late 2012, replacing Maria Elena Lagomasino. He previously headed the sports and entertainment group at SunTrust Banks, an Atlanta-based bank holding company that operates primarily through its SunTrust Bank subsidiary and has about $175 billion in assets.
GenSpring is SunTrust Banks’ multifamily office affiliate.
The San Francisco wealth management office, now GenSpring, previously housed advisers in SunTrust’s sports and entertainment specialty division. It was recently reorganized because “the families that
they serve are really more of a fit under the private-wealth service model than the sports and entertainment model,” Soldano said.
GenSpring’s new L.A. office, on Avenue of the Stars in Century City, is headed by two advisers: Alan Bonde and Jan Vega, both of whom joined from Wilmington Trust, part of Buffalo, N.Y.-based M&T Bank Corp.
Bonde served as head of Wilmington’s California operations, and Vega previously was a relationship manager.
Soldano said she hopes to grow the L.A. office quickly and that in the meantime, support for the two advisers will come from the Orange County office.
“We’ve always wanted to have an L.A. office,” Soldano said. The firm has been working toward an outfit there in earnest over the past 12 months.
The latest office additions give GenSpring a footprint in some of the major “money” markets in the state.
“The whole state of California tends to have more first-generation money or ‘new wealth,’ with the exception of San Francisco … which has ‘old money’ and already is multigenerational,” Soldano said. “San Francisco is kind of the second financial market in this country, with New York being the first. Los Angeles falls in the new-wealth camp.
There’s a segment of that money that’s the Hollywood or celebrity money—that’s what you think of when you hear of wealth in L.A. But there’s a whole other segment of wealth that’s not Hollywood, and that’s typically our client base. The movie-star wealth is primarily served by business management firms in L.A. Not to say that we don’t do that, but GenSpring typically serves more generational wealth.”
Local History
Soldano is no stranger to the Los Angeles wealth-advisory services market. She began her career there, running a single-family office for Ted Field, cofounder of record label Interscope Records. He’s heir to the family fortune built by Marshall Field, founder of Chicago-based department store Marshall Field & Co., which was sold to Macy’s Inc. in 2005.
Soldano founded Cymric Family Office Services in 1987 in Costa Mesa as a single-family office, later expanding it to a multifamily office before selling it to GenSpring in 2009.
She serves on the advisory board of Family Office Exchange, a Chicago-based network organization for family offices and wealthy families.
Soldano is also active in the local wealth-management scene, including serving as co-chair of the Center for Investment and Wealth Management at University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business.
GenSpring last week hosted the dozen Western-region advisers at its Costa Mesa office, providing an opportunity for firm veterans and newcomers to “not only connect but to know about the service model and the culture of serving families,” Soldano said.
“Many of them already know it, and it’s a reinforcement. This isn’t training. This is really a much deeper dive, like, ‘You’ve had your training, and now we’ll show you specific cases, family by family, and how we serve them.’ ”
