The IPI takes ultra-high-wealth education program to San Francisco Bay area. The Institute for Private Investors (IPI), a new York-based education and networking resource for ultra-wealthy families, has put together a West Coast complement to its Wharton School-based education program for high-wealth individuals and families.

"Investors asked us for an in-depth and rigorous program on the West Coast that allows them to more confidently manage their managers and oversee their portfolios," says IPI senior managing director Kristi Kuechler, who is based in San Francisco. "They recognize that the skills necessary to oversee their investments are not the same as those that made them wealthy."

Better stewards

The western iteration of the IPI's 10-year-old Wealth Management Program will take place on the campus of Stanford, Calif.-based Stanford University this coming 10 August through 15 August.

The program is aimed at those anticipating a significant liquidity event -- the sale of a business, say, or a substantial inheritance -- as well wealth inheritors who want to be better equipped to participate in the management of their legacies.

The Wealth Management Program is further geared to those with "complex portfolios that exceed $20 million [in] investable assets," the IPI says in its program brochure.

The point of the thing is to help attendees be betters stewards of their wealth by giving them a good grounding in investment planning, selecting advisors and managers, factoring tax and estate planning into their overall wealth management plans, and constructing family-governance systems. Beyond these core courses, the program is meant to help attendees consider the broader purpose of wealth in their lives.

Among those scheduled to teach at the IPI's Stanford Wealth Management Program are Nobel laureate William Sharpe, developer of the Sharpe Ratio for analyzing investment performance and an emeritus professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, and Meir Statman, professor of finance at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business. The roster of guest lecturers for the program include fund-of-hedge-funds manager Alexander Klikoff of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Fintan Partners, and Ash McNeely of the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts.

You don't have to be an IPI member to go, but space is limited. The program costs $9,500 a head.

The next IPI Wharton School Wealth Management Program is in early May 2008, but it's full -- and so is the one scheduled to coincide with the Stanford program.

The IPI has about 370 member families. More than a quarter of them have more than $200 million in total assets. That's per family, not collectively. -FWR

Purchase reproduction rights to this article.