Fleming's Rockefeller plans to double number of adviser teams

Rockefeller Capital Management, the wealth and investment advisory firm that emerged from the Rockefellers’ family office, plans to add as many as 115 wealth adviser teams in coming years as it expands throughout the U.S.

The New York-based firm currently has 85 teams, including more than a dozen that were acquired this year. Rockefeller’s hiring of wealth groups from companies such as Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch has helped the firm boost its client asset base fivefold to $90 billion since its creation in 2018.

Much of the growth will be focused in places that have seen an influx of wealthy residents in recent years, partly because of migration from urban areas like New York and Chicago. Cities such as Charlotte, North Carolina, Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee, where Rockefeller recently opened an office, “are clear growth centers,” Chief Executive Greg Fleming said Tuesday in an interview.

Such places “are going to continue to attract population and investment and be a major part of the American growth story over the next 10 years,” he said.

Fleming said he anticipates having adviser groups in 45 to 50 locations. Currently the firm's teams operate from 38 offices nationwide.

Banks, private equity firms and aggregators of registered investment advisers are among those competing to scoop up wealth management firms after two years of pandemic-era stimulus and a prolonged bull market swelled Americans’ bank accounts and increased the ranks of those seeking advice. There were 133 transactions involving wealth firms in the first half of this year, a third more than in the same period of 2021, according to DeVoe & Co.

Fleming, 59, who previously ran Merrill Lynch’s global investment bank and was president of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, formed Rockefeller as an expansion of the family office created by John D. Rockefeller in 1882. Fleming acquired Rock & Co., the family’s investment firm, four years ago with backing from Andreas Halvorsen’s hedge fund, Viking Global Investors.

Rockefeller’s business segments include wealth management services for ultra-wealthy individuals and families, asset management and a strategic advisory business that counsels family office clients on lending, acquisitions or other capital needs. Viking Global is the firm’s majority owner, while other shareholders include Fleming and the Rockefeller family.

While the firm’s expansion has been fueled by acquisitions, Fleming said that after he fulfills his plans, Rockefeller “could create an organic growth model, where our existing clients give us more money to take care of on their behalf, they refer us to other clients and we grow organically.”

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