Fourteen years ago, Nataša Williams stepped away from investment banking and into the world of wealth management to escape the time-sapping monotony of spending hours of her life on a plane.
“I was an investment banker doing M&A, and when the business was sold to UBS I told them I fancied moving career to wealth management because I had a two-year-old daughter and was always on a plane,” she says.
That was in 2004 and, as luck would have it, UBS had just bought a high net-worth (HNW) advisory business called Scott Goodman Harris, founded and run by HNW advisory veteran David Scott. Encouraged by this fortuitous timing, Williams transitioned across to UBS’s HNW business, and so began the wealth management chapter of her career.
In 2007, Scott created Vestra Wealth in what Williams describes as “a rebellion against ‘double-dipping’ by the industry”. In the non-transparent, pre-RDR world, fees were being taken from both funds and clients, blurring the line between salesman and adviser: a boundary Scott wanted his new business to address.
“David Scott was adamant he wanted to be an impartial adviser to clients, so no product selling and no retrocession business,” says Williams. “That was hard; the first-year revenues were slim and to say no to accepting retrocessions was a brave move.”
Scott went on to sever ties with UBS in an acrimonious process that involved UBS going to the High Court in order to prevent Vestra Wealth from soliciting its clients and staff. The two firms later reached a settlement.
“There was a difficult transition out of UBS as there was a big lawsuit,” she says, “but in that period the partners raised external capital, so there were clients, friends and family who wrote cheques to launch this venture; one of them was Goldman Sachs.”
Philosophical approach
Williams left Vestra Wealth in 2008 but rejoined in 2013 to launch the private office practice set-up on the back of a growing need to service ultra-high net-worth (UHNW) individuals.
She says: “The firm had about £4bn, and it needed to deepen and strengthen the offering, so the partners who focused on those clients set up the private office team.”
Fast forward to 2015, and the firm’s partners decided it was time to reward loyalty in backing Vestra when it went solo in 2008. The partners therefore decided to strike a deal that would ensure the long-term nature and stability of the shareholding.
As a result, in March 2016, Vestra teamed up with LGT, the private bank and asset manager owned by the Princely House of Liechtenstein, which today has chf180bn (£136bn) under management. Vestra Wealth became majority owned by LGT after it struck a deal to acquire shares from Vestra’s external investors.
Williams says: “It was deemed there was strong cultural alignment and they wished to have a presence in the UK, so it was an expansion story, not a consolidation story.”
At the time, LGT said the deal would provide it with “a significant foothold in the important British market”. Vestra, meanwhile, would benefit from LGT’s exposure to Asia, where it has chf40bn under management. “The fit of the Vestra Wealth business with LGT was good and it also allowed our external investors to be able to realise their investment,” adds Williams.
Since the merger, LGT has done little, if anything, to change the business. The group has remained a partnership with all the partners still involved as shareholders, while the investment process and day-to-day running of the firm have also remained intact.
“LGT did not want to buy an amazing business and tamper with it, so they ensured all the aspects of what made Vestra Wealth successful should remain, but they have given us the ability to use the credit lines from LGT Bank in Europe. For our business, it has been a wonderful development.”
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