Top Recommended UHNW Wealth Managers

‘We set this up in 2009 after one of the greatest financial meltdowns of our lives: there was suddenly a real shift,’ recalls Edward Lawson Johnston, the impressive founder of LJ Partnership, which now has $14 billion under management. ‘People were asking themselves difficult questions about how their money was managed, and real estate grew up as being of particular interest.’

It’s this real estate-centric offering which marks the firm apart. Lawston Johnston outlines how the firm arrived at its business model: ‘We said, “Let’s find themes in the market that we like and form a joint venture with those entities.”’ He points to the firm’s excellent track record in student housing, where it recently found an opportunity in Germany – to the benefit of its client base.

The business is continuing to move forward. Lawson Johnston spends a lot of time in the US, which helps keep him alive to fresh thinking. ‘I sometimes think, “My God we [the UK] are so far behind. Whether it be on AI, or cryptocurrency, we want to be early adopters of new technologies,’ he says.

The firm’s move into the US was a natural fit, he explains (it serves a lot of US families), but it also has a strong presence (not to mention local real estate knowledge) in Asia. ‘We feel the world is a much smaller place and it’s important to have people on the ground and bringing those people together,’ he explains.