Cresset's Platform Pitch Pulls a $4B UBS Team

Cresset Capital Management's recruiting pitch is consistent: a multi-family office platform with alternatives attached in exchange for a wirehouse team's book of client assets. The latest to accept it is a 16-person UBS team led by Michael Bober and Ed Ventrice that managed $4 billion in client assets. The move gives the New York-based firm, which oversees more than $250 billion, its first Boca Raton office and a deeper South Florida footprint.

Bober and Ventrice, who spent the last 11 years at UBS, most recently as managing directors, are joined by Michael MacDonald, William 'Billy' Marino, Sarah Ponczek, and Alex Santos. The team's practice runs to corporate executives, business owners, high-net-worth families, multigenerational clients, foundations and endowments, and professional athletes, with institutional consulting and business succession planning in the offering.

Bober frames the move as a platform decision. 'Joining Cresset represents an exciting next chapter for our team and our clients,' he said. 'Cresset has built an exceptional platform around an integrated approach to wealth management, and we look forward to offering our clients those capabilities while continuing to provide the highly personal advice and service they expect.'

Cresset was founded in 2017 as a family office serving entrepreneurs and private equity players Eric Becker and Avy Stein. The firm touts its employee-owned structure as a source of longevity; in 2024 it sold a minority stake of less than 10% and has since made several acquisitions, including last year's deal for employee-owned Monticello Associates. In April, Cresset promoted Susie Cranston to chief executive, with Becker and Stein stepping down as co-CEOs to become executive co-chairs.

Since 2024, Cresset has brought over a J.P. Morgan Wealth Management team in San Francisco that had built a $5 billion book, added managing director Heather Pelant's $2 billion book from Baker Street Advisors in San Francisco in February, and in July hired Chris Tiano and Nick Smith as managing directors and wealth advisors in Los Angeles and New York; the pair had spent roughly two years at Lazard Wealth overseeing $1.1 billion in client assets. The firm is building a national footprint one team at a time, selecting groups whose client bases match its family-office focus.

The strategy runs on multi-family office services and alternative investment capabilities aimed at advisors who already serve high-net-worth families. The UBS team's client mix — corporate executives, business owners, foundations — sits exactly where institutional consulting and succession planning carry weight, and the new Boca Raton office gives that bet a physical address.

The $4 billion book works out to $250 million per advisor, a density at which the platform outranks the payout; as this publication argued when a $2.4 billion team left U.S. Bank for LPL, the talent war has moved to platform engineering. Cresset is building that platform around employee ownership, alternative investment capabilities, and family-office services, then recruiting teams whose books are large enough to make the economics work. Every liftout resets the expectation of what an independent platform owes a wirehouse team.

For wirehouse private-wealth groups, the RIA down the street with a higher grid is no longer the main threat; an employee-owned multi-family office now bids for the entire client relationship in one firm. Cresset's Boca Raton office shows that pitch traveling beyond the usual RIA hubs, and the $4 billion book is now the evidence.