Wealth managers eye Alaska’s affluent

FWR Staff

2 February 2006

Seattle RIA taps Anchorage bank for far-northern leads. Seattle-based Pacific Portfolio Consulting, a fee-only investment advisory to high-worth and institutional clients, has become part of Pacific Wealth Advisors , a newly formed wealth-management and investment-consulting company that aims to provide wealth management, trust, and investment advisory services to individuals, families, and institutional clients in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

The Alaska part of the equation is linked to Anchorage-based Northrim BanCorp, which has taken a 24.9% stake in PWA, according to Federal Reserve documents.

Main guys

This investment is in keeping with Northrim’s “strategy revenue sources and geographic scope,” says Northrim’s president Marc Langland. He adds that Northrim's well-to-do private- and commercial-customer base will be the PWA’s primary market in Alaska, at least initially.

James Gallagher will be the chairman of PWA. Gallagher is also chairman and CEO of Seattle-based Elliott Cove Capital Management, an index-based portfolio manager in which Northrim has a 49% stake. Gallagher is a former CEO of Columbia Banking System, the holding company for Columbia Bank, which has about 40 branches in Washington, mostly dotted around Puget Sound south of Seattle.

Lawrence Hood, president and CEO of Pacific Portfolio Consulting – a firm he founded in 1992 – will have those titles as PWA’s chief administrator. Pacific Portfolio Consulting has about $920 million in assets under advisory, according to its latest ADV filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Robert Nokes will be president and CEO of Pacific Portfolio Trust Company, a new PWA entity. Nokes was president of SAFECO Trust Company until Mellon acquired it in 2004.

Northrim BanCorp, Inc. is the parent company of Northrim Bank, a commercial bank that provides personal and business banking services in Alaska through locations in Anchorage, Eagle River, Wasilla and Fairbanks. –FWR