Sector Veteran Starts Alts Consultancy for Family Offices

www.HFMweek.com - July 25th 2013

Rising interest in hedge funds and other alternatives from smaller family offices has led one industry veteran to start a consulting business focused on the intersection between the two sectors, HFMWeek has learned.

Jason Nardis is leaving his role as a VP focused on alternative investments at New York-based financial planners the Family Management Corporation (FMC) to start Old Bridge Capital Advisors.

He plans to help family offices with due diligence, sourcing new managers and a range of other services, focusing on the $1bn-and-under family office market which he perceives to be a growing allocator to hedge funds.

“The bigger family offices have this work done in-house for them,” he told HFMWeek. “I can be an outsourced option for a growing wave of smaller family offices considering alternative investments.”

A survey designed to gauge hedge fund appetite among investors conducted by Credit Suisse earlier this year found a slight increase in allocations by family and multi-family offices compared to 2012.

That rise comes amid rising convergence between the family office and hedge fund worlds. Viking Global Investors co-founder Brian Olson was hired to help manage money for the Sackler family office recently, while panelists debating capital raising at HFMWeek’s Subscriber Breakfast in New York on Thursday said family offices had become important early-stage allocators to hedge funds.

Nardis plans to draw on experience from three years at FMC and a previous spell as an analyst at the family office of Jerome Kohlberg, a co-founder from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. He has also worked within the Alternative & Quantitative Investments Group at UBS.

The two family office companies will be initial clients and Nardis will look to add more. He sees family offices playing a growing part within hedge funds as smaller family offices allocate more and regulatory burdens persuade more hedge funds to turn into them.