Emigrant has taken minority stakes in wealth firms as part of its strategy and taken on people to help work on its corporate activities.

The US capital and advisory services partner, Emigrant Partners, has announced that several new hires are joining its advisory team and investment group. 
 
Jason Ehrlich is joining as managing director and head of investments, while Mark Bruno joins the firm as managing director and head of strategic advisory, and Sam Grewal as vice president of investments, the firm said late last week.

“Jason and Mark bring a collective knowledge of wealth and asset management that will immediately translate to the continued growth and success of our existing partner firms,” Jenny Souza (pictured), president and CEO of Emigrant Partners, said.
 
The new hires will work closely with Emigrant’s 20 partner firms to identify inorganic and organic opportunities to accelerate their growth. In addition, the team will focus on finding new opportunities to strategically expand Emigrant Partners’ platform and investments in the industry’s most successful wealth and asset management firms, the company said. 

M&A is an important part of the Emigrant formula. Emigrant has taken minority stakes in wealth firms as part of its strategy. In February, for example, it took a strategic but non-voting stake in SteelPeak Wealth – the second such stake it has taken in a month. In January it announced a strategic minority, non-voting investment in Dakota Wealth Management – a firm based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The business, which was founded in 2018 by Peter Raimondi, has more than $2.5 billion of assets under management across more than 1,700 clients. Emigrant has a total of 20 partners firms and a total of more than $100 billion of assets under management. 

Background 
Before joining Emigrant Partners as its head of investments, Ehrlich was most recently a senior principal at TowerBrook Capital Partners, a private equity firm with more than $20 billion of AuM, where he was responsible for leading investments across the financial services industry. He was also an investment professional with Onex Partners, Lightyear Capital, and Aquiline Capital, where he invested in and worked alongside businesses in wealth management, asset management, WealthTech, retirement services and insurance. 

Grewal will work closely with Ehrlich on deploying Emigrant Partners’ strategic capital, drawing on more than a decade of experience across sell-side M&A, leveraged finance, and private equity. Grewal, who was formerly a vice president at Emigrant Bank, has also worked at Essar Capital Americas and BNP Paribas.
 
Bruno oversees strategic advisory for Emigrant Partners and will focus primarily on helping Emigrant’s 20 partner firms execute on their growth plans, while also introducing new opportunities to drive organic and inorganic growth. Bruno was previously the managing director of the wealth management group at Informa, where he oversaw the group’s media (WealthManagement.com), research (Wealth Management IQ), and events (RIA Edge) businesses. He has more than 20 years of experience as a researcher, consultant and content creator in the wealth and asset management industries.

In May, Emigrant Partners appointed one of its senior figures, Jenny Souza, as president and chief executive officer.