Private Dining: Stanhope service seats all clients at the same table

The exterior of the building housing boutique family wealth manager Stanhope Capital in London’s Portman Square may be grey and bleak, but the plush, beige carpeted offices within are lined with a series of works by Lucio Fontana, the Italian painter, sculptor and theorist of Argentine birth.

Stanhope’s French-born CEO, Daniel Pinto also has an international mindset, with branches of his family in Portugal and Israel, and clients spread across Europe, the Middle East, the US and Latin America.

His firm serves the top end of the wealth management pyramid, with a minimum $10m account size, held by families considering setting up their own office, but deciding they are better-served externally.

“We can use our firepower to negotiate substantial discounts with third-party managers and pay money back to our clients,” says Mr Pinto, tucking in to a grilled organic Scottish salmon fillet, with a hint of oregano and garlic, in Stanhope’s discreet private dining room.

Some families among Stanhope’s 140 wealth management clients investing a combined total of $10bn, outsource all their investments to the firm, others just the liquid assets, while a smaller number farm out the private equity and real estate slices.

“We started with just five families, including our own and none of them knew each other,” recalls Mr Pinto. “The glue sealing them together came from the founders, but we very quickly expanded outside this core group.”

It has been vital to the Stanhope founders – and a board of directors including advertising guru Sir Martin Sorrell and former BP boss Lord Browne of Madingley – to consider the interests of all clients, rather than follow the typical multi-family office structure of a major core family and less important satellite clans.

Mr Pinto is scathing of the high-rolling, big-brand private banking culture, with its focus on “hired guns” and bonuses.  “When we are pitching for business, our biggest competitors are private banks, but we employ long-term thinkers as opposed to mercenaries,” he says. 

“Clients are very sensitive to the nature, skills and mentality of people running the business.”

Key to the growth of Stanhope has been a focus on direct deals and private equity, with six of the group’s 85 employees specialising in this sphere. “A number of our entrepreneurial clients want to buy a stake in a business, to be directly in touch with a growing asset, as opposed to completely outsourcing their portfolio to a fund manager,” says Mr Pinto, himself a former merchant banker with Warburg. 

“There are two sides to my brain and I feel just as comfortable dealing with liquid asset management as with private equity deals for clients.”

Stanhope’s selling point is that the same team is able to host discussions with entrepreneurs on both diversified portfolio management and direct investments. 

Nibbling on a chocolate brownie, Mr Pinto believes many avaricious private banks will eventually get their just deserts. 

“People think they are paying 0.5 to 1 per cent, but the reality is closer to 2.5 per cent. They sign up for the tip of the iceberg, but below this there is a whole feast of fees. The thought that 2.5 per cent of your wealth goes out of the window each year is unacceptable. When people from banks come in for interviews, they tell us: ‘We can’t work in this atmosphere anymore.’”