We pioneered executive search 49 years ago and in 1993 the firm morphed into a liftout specialist, for investment and distribution/HNW teams. As such, our sole focus for the last two and a half decades has been on team liftouts and small acquisitions in the investment management industry.

Robert Warren pioneered the liftout business in the early nineties and Institutional Investor Magazine ten years later labeled him the “liftout king”. Daniel Enskat has written a dozen books on the asset management industry and leads our proprietary quantitative and qualitative research efforts. The combination of data and research along with our network is key to each assignment.

Moving a group of people to a new firm is NOT a liftout, a concept often misunderstood in the industry. We define a liftout as bringing you a top decile team along with an immediately marketable track record and portable institutional assets. A liftout is profitable immediately and acts a pied piper for other asset classes and products, hiring multiple individuals is not. The teams we bring are never looking in the marketplace, as they are top performers and in most cases have worked together for over a decade.

In recent years our focus has been on artificial intelligence and how it is impacting asset management distribution, operations and investments. Our team spent time all over the world to personally meet with the top AI pioneers and leaders tho see how they would tackle AI, for automation as well as investments and to get involved with asset managers, be that as a team liftout, acquisition, JV or as R&D. “AI is like teenage sex. Everyone talks about it. Nobody knows how to do it. But everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so they claim they do it too.” This is especially true in investment management, where firms overpay for the wrong talent and address the wrong issues. We can connect you to the leaders in AI, spend less, and grow more.