Boston-based multifamily office Silver Bridge Advisors has hired former Wilmington Trust managing director Benjamin Ledyard as business head for its mid-Atlantic region. He will be responsible for business development in along the US Eastern Seaboard roughly between New York and Washington, DC.
In 2004, 2005 and 2007 Worth magazine ranked Mr Ledyard, who joined Wilmington, Del.-based Wilmington Trust in 1998, among the top 100 wealth advisors in the US.
"Ben brings a proven track record of creating, implementing, and managing sophisticated wealth-planning strategies for high-net-worth individuals and families," says Silver Bridge's president and chief Stephen Prostano.
Most recently, Mr Ledyard was a senior advisor at Wilmington Trust, a director of its wealth strategies team and head of the its family-office subsidiary on the US East Coast.
In addition to his buisness-building role with Silver Bridge, Mr Ledyard will establish and operate a trust company with a view to making Delaware-trust services available to Silver Bridges clients throughout the US.
Silver Bridge's chief investment officer Thomas Manning says Ledyard's appointment is in keeping with the firm's goal of providing "our clients with the highest level of personalized service and validates our ability to continue to attract top industry talent."
Mr Ledyard is Silver Bridge's fourth high-profile hire in about nine months. In May, it hired US Trust portfolio manager Lynne Dombroski as a principal and client advisor. Earlier this year, it installed Allison Taff, formerly head of business development and marketing for Fidelity's Family Office Services group, as head of its own family-office support offering. Late last fall, the firm added former Lehman Brothers executive Deirdre Prescott as its director of client development.
Silver Bridge, known as Hale and Dorr Wealth Advisors until late last year, is an 80-year-old affiliate of the Boston-based law firm WilmerHale. The wealth advisory says the name change is part of campaign, begun in 2005 with Prostano's arrival from Atlantic Trust, to make it more efficient and competitive.
Among other recent initiatives is a plan to put about half of the firm's equity in the hands of its employees, an expanded investment platform intended to accommodate outside as well as in-house products, and new data-aggregation and performance-reporting systems of its own design and construction.
Mr Ledyard says he's "impressed with the entrepreneurial spirit that permeates the Silver Bridge culture, the firm`s independent and sustainable business model, and the significant investments made in its technology, operations and reporting platform."
Silver Bridge had about $1.2 billion in assets under management late in July 2009, according to the firm's most recent ADV filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
