[MELBOURNE] Goldman Sachs plans to expand its private wealth management team in Australia to capture a boom in self-made multi-millionaires and family wealth looking for global investments.
“We are absolutely looking to grow,” Jean-Paul Churchouse, the firm’s head of private wealth management for South-east Asia and Australia, said. “We are looking to hire, but it’s really about finding the right people rather than hitting a target.”
Goldman now has around 13 people on the ground in Sydney and Melbourne, including eight advisers, targeting ultra-rich clients that have at least A$100 million (S$83 million) of investable assets. It established this setup about four years ago, the only private wealth team that was set up in Asia-Pacific during this time, and said that it’s only getting started.
The Wall Street bank is offering Australian investors access to the firm’s network of investment bankers around the world and staff with relationships on otherwise hard-to-access private deals. It’s seeking to get a slice of the wealth opportunity in the country, alongside other foreign banks such as UBS Group, as well as domestic wealth management firms such as LGT Crestone, which also target less affluent individuals.
Underpinning Goldman’s push is the years-long wealth creation from expanding family fortunes in areas such as technology. The number of family offices in Asia-Pacific has surpassed Europe and the speed of growth is expected to top North America by the end of the decade, a Deloitte survey showed last year.
In Australia, software giants Canva and Atlassian have minted a younger generation of entrepreneurs, including Mike Cannon-Brookes, in recent years, while older ultra-wealthy mining tycoons such as Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest continue to feature among the country’s richest.
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“We have seen huge growth in family offices” in Australia, Churchouse said. “Once families generate meaningful wealth, they are looking for professionals to manage that for them.”
Goldman’s white-glove offerings for the ultra-rich include managing family office portfolios, providing access to specialist asset classes such as private equity, and connecting clients with experts. The firm also arranges conferences for its clients and invites them to seminars on topics such as philanthropy and climate change.
“They are very aware that they need to be thinking about investing from a global perspective, not just in Australia, and we really cater to that need,” Churchouse said.
Goldman’s operations in Australia and New Zealand include asset management and corporate advisory. For private wealth management, the number of clients per adviser is expected to grow in line with the firm’s global model, where each adviser has between 20 and 25 clients.
With Australia’s wealthy an increasingly powerful force in capital markets, Churchouse says the firm’s global resources are behind the growth of the business.
“Ultra-high-net-worth businesses take a really long time to grow because developing the relationships take so long,” he said. “But we are very confident the business is going to continue to grow meaningfully and we will invest in it.” BLOOMBERG
