Multifamily office formerly known as AMA acquires Inlign Wealth Management. GenSpring Family Offices has acquired Phoenix, Ariz.-based Inlign Wealth Management. The deal continues a multi-year expansion strategy aimed at bringing Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based GenSpring -- "Asset Management Advisors" until recently -- to markets in need of high-end fiduciary wealth management.

The terms of the transaction, completed last month, haven't been disclosed.

Inlign advises its clients, mainly ultra-high-net-worth families, on about $2 billion in assets. Though founded in 2002, it pre-dates in a sense because it stems from a Phoenix-based Arthur Andersen investment-advisory office managed by Inlign founder and CEO Mark Feldman and staffed by a core of present-day Inlign employees.

Old home week

As a result of the merger, Inlign will become a GenSpring-branded office. Its 48 staffers, including Feldman, are slated to join GenSpring.

The link-up with GenSpring, a subsidiary of Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks, makes sense for Inlign because of cultural affinities between the firms, according to Feldman. "GenSpring's business model is based on putting the most effective intellectual capital in the world to work for the families it serves," he says. "So for us [joining GenSpring is like] 'old home week' and it's consistent with our views on what families need."

The merger also gives Inlign's wealth managers expanded opportunities for in-house professional development. "I think this creates an environment for sharing ideas," says Feldman. "It gives us a chance to learn from them, and I think for them to learn from us, to create a better mousetrap; it's a process I'm very comfortable with."

GenSpring provides integrated wealth management, concierge services, family-governance consulting and product-neutral investment advice to approximately 600 ultra-high-net-worth families. It limits the number of families its advisors work with to 20, though the average is 12 families per advisor.

Feldman says the family-office value proposition comes down to helping high-wealth families -- those with at least $25 million -- manage their finances so that the families can concentrate on governance and legacy management. "That takes a lot of effort and review and discussion," says Feldman. "It's something we can certainly facilitate, but can't drive those discussions. What we do allows the families to spend time on these strategic discussions."

No field of dreams

Though the addition of Inlign gives GenSpring its first office west of the Mississippi, the multifamily office isn't interested in geographic expansion merely for the sake of continuing to grow beyond the geographic footprint of SunTrust Banks in the southeastern U.S. Rather it opens new offices or acquire established wealth-management firms in keeping with client demand.

It was client demand that prompted GenSpring to open a second office in Atlanta in 2002, and it was client demand that led it to acquire Greenwich, Conn.-based Eagle Capital International in 2003, and to establish a satellite of its Orlanda, Fla. Office in nearby Sarasota, Fla., in 2005.

"It's not a case of 'build it and they will come,'" says GenSpring's CEO Maria Elena Lagomasino. "It's not that we see a major market and say 'We've got to be there.' It's about serving our clients' needs."

Or, as with Inlign, it's about seizing an opportunity to add a good and proven wealth-management team to the GenSpring family. "We knew [Feldman] and we knew what he was doing," says Lagomasino. "So we went after him and his team."

But then the client demand that underpins its expansion seems to be on the rise, so GenSpring is is planning further growth. The firm's assets under advisory have grown from about $500 million when SunTrust acquired it in 2001 to $15 billion now, with organic growth accounting to the lion's share of this increase.

Inlign is GenSpring's second acquisition in about four months. In September 2007 it purchased TBK Investments, a Miami-based financial and investment consultancy to wealthy families in Latin America and Europe.

Including its new location in Arizona, Genspring has 15 offices. Six of them are in Florida. -FWR

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