HighTower Advisors adds $600M multi-family office to independent channel

HighTower Advisors, a hybrid broker-dealer and investment adviser, has added Legacy Wealth Group Inc., a South Florida team that previously managed close to $600 million in assets. Based in Fort Lauderdale, Legacy Wealth is led by three managing partners who launched the firm earlier this year. Two, William Van Dresser and Elden LeGaux, previously worked at Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust of Coral Gables. Both were executive vice presidents and managing directors of wealth management at Gibraltar. The third person on the new team, Eugene Frankel, was previously an investment manager at Digital Sky Technologies, a tech-focused private equity shop. Legacy Wealth will be the ninth team to join the independent business side of HighTower's platform, said CEO Elliot Weissbluth. “We recently launched the platform to support independent advisers about a year and a half ago,” he said. “It's for advisers who run and own their business but don't want to do the back office themselves.” “I've had clients for many years, and they had fairly significant liquidity events,” said Mr. Van Dresser. “They asked me to open a multi-family office for them, so this is a new business with anchor clients.” HighTower currently has 55 teams in total across its channels and began the independent channel in May of 2013.