$500-Mln AUM Goldman Advisor Leaves to Open Texas Office for Midwestern RIA

February 10, 2021

A Goldman Sachs private wealth advisor in Houston has left to open an office in the city for Cresset Asset Management, a Chicago-based registered investment advisory firm.

Hanley Sayers, who began his career in real estate and joined Goldman in 2011, was overseeing $500 million in assets for Goldman customers, a Cresset spokesman said.

Sayers, who joined Cresset on Wednesday as a partner and managing director, said he was motivated by the firm’s “entrepreneurial spirit.” Founded in 2017, Cresset has grown to $12 billion in assets managed across nine offices by 157 employees, according to its website.

“The fiduciary nature of the business was paramount,” said Sayers, who Goldman had promoted to vice president in 2014. “Having the business structured as a partnership…creates a real sense of transparency and moving in the same direction that heretofore I have not found.”

A spokesman at Goldman, which in December lost two veteran advisors in Philadelphia to UBS Wealth Management, declined to comment on Sayers’ departure.

Goldman has traditionally been a difficult recruiting ground because of the allure of its name to wealthy investors and the supply of investment banking deals it can provide to its advisors. But Mindy Diamond, chief executive of New Jersey recruiting firm Diamond Consultants, who was not involved in Sayers’ move, said blue-chip banks are increasingly vulnerable to losing advisors to boutique wealth firms.

“These models that offer more freedom and control, great transition economics, equity, and access to a more robust and unique investment set are crushing it these days,” she said.

Sayers said he works primarily with high-net-worth business owners who should be comforted by the Cresset platform. The RIA was founded by private equity entrepreneurs Eric Becker and Avy Stein. Its website promotes its advisers as offering boutique family office services and “institutional-quality” private investments.

Doug Regan, a former J.P. Morgan Private Bank regional head who is Cresset’s co-chairman, said the RIA has high ambitions for its move into the Lone Star State.

“Houston has a projected demographic growth rate of 20% over the next 10 years,” Regan said in an interview. “Given the favorable tax structure of the state and watching the population migration to Texas, we are conspicuously absent there.”

Prior to joining Goldman, Sayers helped start a family-owned construction firm called Osprey Development, was an intern at a real estate investment fund and worked as a broker at Sotheby’s International Realty, according to his LinkedIn profile.