Artificial Intelligence Industry Insights
Microsoft Research Finds Organizations Across Industries are “Embracing Tech Intensity As a Key Driver of Competitive Advantage”
McKinsey on Asian Asset Management – Five Disruptions Impacting Future Growth
Asset Management M&A Perspectives from Casey Quirk/Deloitte
Asset & Wealth Management Revolution: pwc identifies six game changers & four key trends for the decade ahead
WeWork hires AI scientist from Amazon/FB/Google and creates an AI desk
This summer, WeWork, the Israeli/NY $20B+ startup created in 2010,…
It’s A Bright Future, If You’re An Algorithm / The Art of Computer Programming
A great in-depth read in the NYT on Donald Ervin…
Facebook is open-sourcing PyText for faster NLP development
Facebook AI Research is open-sourcing PyText, a modeling framework that…
NeurIPS 2018: The ComiCon of AI… Themes, Sponsors, New AI Breakthroughs
The Neural Processing Information Systems conference is the Woodstock of…
AI Index 2018: Europe – China – United States; AI Outpaces CS
The 94-page AI Index 2018 tries to be a comprehensive…
China vs US Artificial Intelligence: Business Model Comparisons
We keep writing about Tencent, Didi, SenseTime and other AI…
The Rise of AI and why Companies that Wait to Adopt AI May Never Catch Up (Harvard)
CNBC International this week published an in-depth and provocative video…
How does the US Army deal with AI? RCO, AFC, AI Signals and PE firms
How does the US army deal with Artificial Intelligence? Two…
Google invests in Tokyo-based AI/ML PaaS solutions provider
Tokyo-based AI/ML startup ABEJA today announced a strategic investment from…
Tech-focused Real Estate startup hires Microsoft AI head as CTO
Compass, a tech-focused real estate platform, just hired Microsoft’s chief…
About Us
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.
"A liftout is a complex process which requires us to work with, consult and at times guide your legal, operational, compliance and HR staff to ensure a smooth process and successful business from day one."
Robert Warren
What We Do
We have facilitated over 70 team liftouts and investment boutique acquisitions in the last two decades, with each team still with the firms we placed them with. We have clients in all continents and across all business models, including long only and alternatives.
Business continuity and cultural fit are the most important factors for our work. Warren Enskat will work with you to create a systematic process and structure to find those top decile performing investment teams. We have the ability to look for multiple teams at the same time and integrate them seamlessly into the cultural fabric of the organization, along with key distribution talent, portable track records and asset trails to ensure profitability from day one along with AUM growth.