The CEO of Chicago-headquartered Hightower Advisors, Bob Oros, is out of the firm and is being replaced by a long-standing Goldman Sachs figure, Larry Restieri. Our US correspondent analyzes what has happened and what's possibly next for this large wealth management organization.

The curtain is up for Act III of the Hightower Advisors drama.

In Act I, plucky lawyer turned entrepreneur Elliot Weissbluth turned an insight into a goldmine: let unhappy wirehouse brokers run their own show as independent advisors as part of a fast growing RIA platform that scaled up rapidly. Eleven years after launching in 2007, Hightower had $30 billion in AuM and sold a majority stake to private equity powerhouse Thomas H Lee Partners for an estimated $250 million to $350 million.

In Act II, the suits at Lee showed battle-scarred Weissbluth the door in 2019 and brought in Bob Oros, an affable industry veteran with experience at Charles Schwab, Fidelity, LPL Financial and HD Vest as CEO. 

Mandated to change the business model, Oros moved away from revenue sharing with advisors to direct control and oversaw a massive M&A binge resulting in 50 acquisitions over six years, capped off by last year’s blockbuster purchase of an 80 per cent stake in institutional investment consultant NEPC, which had around $1.7 trillion in assets under advisement.

Act III: Now one of the largest RIAs in the US with $123 billion in AuM, Hightower stuns the industry by ousting Oros as CEO and replacing him with a Goldman Sachs lifer, Larry Restieri, most recently  CEO of Ayco, the Goldman unit that manages portfolios of corporate executives.

Fittingly, for what may be the firm’s last act, many plot points need to be resolved. What happened behind the scenes – was Oros’ exit graceful or forced and how long does he stick around? Does Restieri, who has no experience in the mass affluent market, have what it takes to lead the firm? What is TH Lee’s exit strategy?  

Oros pro and con
Hightower describes the sudden CEO switcheroo as a “planned succession,” noting that Oros will stay on as a member of the firm’s board of directors.

To be sure, Oros’ tenure as chief executive is being widely lauded.

His ability to “grow the business substantially” is all the more impressive because Oros was given “a very tough hand to play,” said industry consultant Alois Pirker. “Taking over from a founder is always difficult, especially such a charismatic personality such as Elliot Weissbluth.”

Oros was “a hugely important leader for the firm in the first years after the founder generation,” said M&A expert, Dan Seivert, CEO of investment bank Echelon Partners, noting Oros’ consolidation of the firm’s multiple LLCs, deal making, and ability “to provide liquidity events for partners and solve succession for those that moved on.”

Oros transformed Hightower “from an investor in offices slash wirehouse model to an integrator approach that created value as demonstrated by the meteoric AuM growth,” according to John Furey, managing partner of Advisor Growth Strategies.

Even one of his rivals, Focus CEO Adam Birenbaum, praised Oros for “ushering in a significant strategy change” and “executing it to very solid success.” 

But Oros’ reign was not all smooth sailing.

TH Lee’s failure to secure funding in the market for a majority stake in Hightower last spring was a major disappointment for the firm’s private equity backer. More recently, Hightower lost a high profile court case centering on restrictive covenants when a US District Court judge ruled that a non-compete clause in a former advisor’s contract was void under California law.

The final act
All eyes are now on Oros’ replacement Restieri, a 56-year old Harvard graduate who has spent most of his career at Goldman in wealth and asset management servicing and selling products to high and ultra-high net worth clients.

“Oros will be tough to replace,” said Tim Welsh, president of Nexus Strategy. “There are so many nuances to independent RIA deal making that very few possess in the industry. Having an outsider from a captive environment may not immediately translate to success in the independent space, so an incoming CEO from Goldman will definitely be challenged by the competition.”

Noting Restieri’s background, other observers speculate that the new CEO may want to add recurring product revenue to Hightower’s legacy advisory fee revenue. “If new leadership plans on introducing product distribution to a fiduciary service model, [then] that sets up the potential for an inevitable conflict of interest,” said one former Hightower executive.

As for the conclusion of the Hightower drama, the firm declared that the leadership change heralds “its next phase of growth.”

Does that mean a mega-merger? An IPO? Organic growth powered by new products? A bet that Hightower can outpace PE-backed arch-rivals Focus Partners Wealth, Creative Planning, Mercer Advisors, Mariner Wealth Advisors and a handful of others as the biggest RIA consolidator?

The industry will have to wait for the final curtain to find out.