布朗兄弟哈里曼Targets Ultrarich Entrepreneurs

Scott Clemons, chief investment strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., recalls how a former managing partner once put the firm’s approach into perspective: “He said that the partners of Brown Brothers Harriman are people who think like people of action but act like people of thought.”

BBH occupies a unique position in U.S. financial services. Founded in 1818, the country’s largest and oldest private bank is also the biggest such independent partnership remaining on Wall Street by assets, revenue and number of professionals.

New York–based BBH’s fewer than 40 partners oversee $62 billion in assets under management and some$4 trillion under custody. With an alumni list that includes former president George H.W. Bush and ex–Federal Reserve Board chair Alan Greenspan, the bank has built formidable brand recognition while avoiding the limelight. By protecting capital and eschewing principal transactions in favor of client services, it has weathered storms ranging from the Panic of 1857 to the Great Depression. BBH’s commercial lending division emerged largely unscathed from the credit crisis in 2009.

At first glance such a deeply rooted and conservative culture might appear resistant to change, but that’s not always the case. In January 2014, BBH began radically overhauling its wealth management division to create a new private banking group with more than 250 professionals overseeing $26.5 billion in assets. Drawing specialists from its corporate advisory, commercial lending and asset management divisions to augment veteran wealth managers, the firm aims to create a single service team to handle the complex needs of entrepreneurial wealth.

虽然BBH的根源呈现出商业和贸易贷款，但财富管理长期以来一直是主要业务线，因为该公司引导了业务主人银行客户的家庭资产。BBH为超高净值家庭提供个人银行，信任服务和资产管理。其以服务为中心的方法为这些私人客户服务提供了很好的方式，银行的专业人员提醒前景，因为它是一个私人伙伴关系，业主投资客户。

“This structure allows us to prioritize our clients’ goals while aligning our interests with them over long periods of time,” says Jeffrey Meskin, partner and head of private banking. A hallmark of the bank’s services for individual investors is patient compounding and risk management through fundamental analysis.

尽管新结构看起来是李ke a sea change, BBH insiders regard it as a natural progression. “This is not a change in culture,” says Clemons, a 25-year veteran of the bank. “If anything, it is a more tangible expression of our culture, an expression of the alignment of interests between ourselves and our clients.”

最大的出发是在计算客户关系中。在过去，BBH需要一个八位数最少的可投资资产来建立一个新账户，但新的政权权衡了对所有公司所有业务线的每个关系的价值。这使BBH的投资和遗产规划专家能够与净值在很大程度上被捆绑在具有与银行的商业贷款或咨询关系的私营公司中的客户合作。

“这可以看出，作为业界的更大趋势的一部分，以超越组织边界，”普华永道的纽约的管理咨询子公司的金融服务实践合伙人的合作伙伴，萨姆什·贾安特说，这是普华永道的普拉斯·舒适的咨询子公司的合伙人。许多商业贷款人正在寻求将跨国公司与公司的差距弥合，并管理企业主的资产，耆那教说明。但他还指出，BBH的大部分商业贷款竞争对手都专注于富裕和富裕的客户而不是银行所针对的超高净值分段。

Senior leaders at BBH’s private bank are mulling the idea of broadening the firm’s geographic reach, but not in the same way as the competition. “Historically, the typical approach among the bigger banks expanding into new markets has been to hire an experienced local team with strong existing relationships to establish a presence,” Jain says.

Rather than spend a lot of money hiring talent, BBH will combine strategic partnerships and remote access, Clemons explains. “Due to technology, geography matters less and less, and we will never have branch offices on every corner,” he says. “Wherever there are new cycles of wealth creation, we will seek to build relationships and, through friends of the firm, to raise brand awareness.” As the bicentennial of BBH’s founding approaches, one question is how a low-key, conservatively managed bank can keep its brand relevant in a wealth management industry undergoing competitive upheaval. “I’m 61, and even among my own generation, even after the credit crisis, there is still a focus on trendy investment themes and the latest products offered by Wall Street,” says Michael Rifkin, manager of a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania–based family office that has invested with BBH. “It’s an uphill battle to convince people that investing in quality companies for the long term and partnering with a financial institution that carefully manages risk are the right decision.”