The area in and around the national capital has become home to some of the richest counties in the US. The Swiss wealth management organization is determined to take its business in this area to another level.

UBS is hiring a Washington, DC-based team from Goldman Sachs’ private wealth management division overseeing $3 billion in client assets – highlighting how the home of the US federal government is also an important wealth hotspot.

Media reports (Business Insider) said the team is UBS’s largest hire by client assets since the firm recruited a team from Goldman Sachs overseeing $6 billion in assets in February this year.

The managers are joining the firm’s private wealth unit, where advisors tend to work with clients with a net worth of at least $30 million.

The private wealth advisors are John Hanley, Colin McKay and Michael Francis. The team, which is joining the UBS Northeast Private Wealth market, managed by Julie Fox, located in the Washington, DC PWM office, will report to branch manager Brendan Graham. Other joiners are Karlyn Wright, a trusts and estates specialist, Louis McCabe, a senior wealth strategy associate, and Katherine Andes, a team administrator, will also join the team at UBS Private Wealth Management.

The various hires “have provided notices of resignation to their current employers and will be serving out their respective garden leave periods prior to joining UBS,” the Swiss firm said in a statement yesterday.

The team work in a part of the US that has become prosperous in areas such as IT and sectors often linked to large government agencies, a point not always lost on critics on the expansion of government under recent Republican and Democrat administrations.  The richest county in America is Loudoun County, Virginia, home to Dulles International Airport and hundreds of federal contractors. The second richest is Fairfax County, also in Virginia. 

Private wealth platform
"We continue to focus on recruiting and retaining the most productive financial advisors in the industry,” John Mathews, head of UHNW Americas and Private Wealth Management at UBS Global Wealth Management. “We believe we have the strongest platform for private wealth advisors in the Americas, and with our suite of ultra-high net worth capabilities, advisors like John, Colin and Michael will be able to deliver the full power of UBS to their clients.”

“Washington, DC is an important growth market for our Private Wealth Management business. We look forward to having John, Colin, Michael and their talented team join our firm and help us expand our client offering in this key market,” Fox said.

Hanley has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, having spent the last 15 years at Goldman Sachs. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and received an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Prior to moving into the private wealth management industry in 2010, McKay spent 10 years as an investment banker in the Bay Area focused on the technology sector. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Francis spent 10 years at Goldman Sachs working with both private and institutional clients. He graduated from the US Naval Academy with merit in 1999, serving on board the USS Elrod (FFG 55) and as a Force Logistics Officer at Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit Three in San Diego, California. After his military service, he joined Accredited Home Lenders working for the firm’s senior management team and later earned an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Business. (Francis is an example of former military personnel forging a new career in wealth management.)

Wright has spent all 20 years of her career advising and educating clients on wealth transfer strategies, multigenerational planning, income tax planning, philanthropic planning and asset protection. She began her professional career in the Personal Financial Services group at PricewaterhouseCoopers before moving to the Wealth Advisory Services group in the Goldman Sachs Family Office. She graduated from Lafayette College and Rutgers School of Law.