Team Name: Wise River Advisors
Firm: UBS Private Wealth Management
Senior Members: Craig Chiate, Mark Binder, Glenn Oratz, James Chiate, Tony Guinane
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Team Custodied Assets: $6 billion
Forbes Rankings: Top Wealth Management Teams Private Wealth, Best-In-State Wealth Management Teams
Background: While Craig Chiate started his career in investment banking, Mark Binder had his own real estate company before getting an MBA. Both worked in private wealth at Goldman Sachs, and then moved over to Merrill where they were on founding teams in the private banking and investment group in 2000. They eventually joined UBS in 2013. Chiate and Binder have been partners for nearly 25 years. With 24 people on the team today, they emphasize an intensive, long term financial planning approach that specializes in dealing with families across multiple generations. Many clients are ultra high net worth individuals and families, including entrepreneurs, athletes, entertainers and public company and private equity executives. “It’s not just about the investment process but ultimately helping families with legacy planning for the next generation—really being a holistic center of advice for every part of a client’s life,” says Binder.
Competitive Edge: “We jokingly say that we discovered the most important thing to our clients is not money, it’s their families—and when you can bring those two things together through education and open dialogue, that is at the top of our value proposition,” says Chiate. “We have the ability to understand what is most important to each individual family and address all aspects of those needs.”
Investment Philosophy/Strategy: “The heart of our investment philosophy is to keep things relatively simple,” says Chiate. “Clients can withstand the volatility of the market so long as they understand what they own and that’s why education is such a huge part of our process.” The team tends to favor top-down asset allocation with an emphasis on tax efficient and cost effective strategies. On the equity side, that means typically owning index funds for their broad diversification and tax management benefits, while in fixed income, the team builds bond portfolios that they manage directly. Wise River also tends to be selective with alternative investments, favoring real estate, private equity and private credit. “We’ve been very short in our municipal bond and Treasury portfolios but we’re now in the process of extending that duration, especially with bonds,” says Binder.
Investment Outlook: “This is a particularly unclear time for markets—anybody with a strong opinion on what happens next is overconfident,” says Chiate. “Our outlook is somewhat positive but we are taking a very measured, non-directional approach and trying to play this as defensively as we can.” Both partners agree that with many different arguments to be made about a possible recession or soft economic landing, now is the time to wait and see, while not taking significant bets in either direction. Still, the team emphasizes taking advantage of different opportunities as they arise in the market: They were short on fixed income, for example, but see an opportunity to start extending Treasury and bond portfolio durations with rates locked in.
Biggest Challenge: Finding the right partnership at the top of the team with a shared vision was the biggest challenge, the two say. “We disagree about a million things but in 30 years we haven’t had an argument,” Binder says. “We do our research then come to a joint conclusion.”
Best Advice: “We typically work with clients who have experienced some major change of circumstance, so our advice to clients is to go slowly and not do anything that is illiquid and that you don’t completely understand for a period of time,” says Chiate. “There is absolutely no hurry—sometimes it’s okay to wait a year or two before any major decisions.”
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