The Connable Office, one of the United States’ oldest multi-family offices, has been acquired by Cresset Asset Management, adding around $1.6 billion to the firm’s assets under management. The combined business will oversee $52 billion in AuM.
A specialist in private trust structures, Connable is based in Kalamazoo in Michigan. It has its origins in a single-family office that was established in the late 1800s and has supported seven generations of its founding family and other UHNW clients since it was set up.
The acquisition will see acquirer Cresset’s team expand to around 470 family office professionals. Existing Connable clients will benefit from its wider network of nearly 20 offices in the US, in locations including New York, Naples in Florida and Los Angeles. The business is co-owned by its employees and its client families.
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A relative newcomer to the family office space
While Connable’s history stretches back more than 130 years, Cresset was set up in 2017 by private equity investors Eric Becker and Avy Stein, who were looking to manage their own families’ wealth. But the firm grew rapidly in its first three years of business, adding over $9.5 billion in assets under management as it took on the wealth of other UHNW families. In April, meanwhile, the business acquired two San Francisco advisory teams from J.P. Morgan, together managing $5 billion in client assets.
James Melvin, Connable’s CEO (pictured), told Spear’s he was impressed by Cresset’s growth story, and its vision ‘to create [a] 100-year plan to take care of their family and their client families.’
Melvin said his multi-family office will able to leverage Cresset’s broad expertise in insurance, travel services, and cybersecurity to support its clients. Alongside the full gamut of family office and wealth management services, Cresset supports its clients with liquidity and exit planning for entrepreneurs, philanthropy and family governance — something that will complement Connable’s core strengths in estate planning and investment management.
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‘To survive and to grow and take care of clients for 130 years, you always have to be evolving and looking for growth opportunities, [and] ways to attract and retain top employees,’ Melvin said.
He added: ‘Our clients are all trusts clients. We will continue to manage these trusts … but I imagine that our clients will also start becoming clients of the Cresset Group and their investment platform.’
Becker, who serves as Cresset’s chair, said his family office would be able to draw on Connable’s legacy as it continued to grow. ‘Both Cresset and Connable have built the firms we wanted for our own families, and we are honoured to share that with other successful families as well. Our combined business is designed to serve our clients for generations to come’.
Though the integration between the two businesses is already happening at pace, Melvin said he didn’t expect day-to-day client services would be impacted by the acquisition. ‘The personnel are the same, we’re still in the same facility. Over time, I would hope that [clients] notice an increase in opportunities that they have, but it should be a seamless transaction.’
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An increasingly international outlook
Cresset’s plan for the joint business will see Connable adopt an increasingly international outlook when servicing its UHNW clientele.
While Connable’s client families have historically been dispersed in different parts of the US, creating its ‘own set of complications,’ he says that clients are now often likely to be found across the pond — in France, Germany and the UK.
‘US trusts and estates are viewed differently in [other] countries,’ he said. ‘If you have one beneficiary that moves into Germany or France or some other country where there are tight regulations, and as a trustee you’re not aware of it, you can back into some pretty serious tax and other trouble.’
He added: ‘[Our] families are in all the states, they’re moving into Europe. How does a single family office keep up with that? The answer is that they have to grow, and you have to have the assets to keep up.’
