Former chief executive officer of Barclays Wealth, Tom Kalaris will launch Saranac Partners on Aug 1, marking the return to wealth management for the ex-Barclays “musketeer.” Kalaris was one of the four “musketeers” running the wealth management business for the British bank during the time Bob Diamond was group chief executive at Barclays PLC. Based in London’s St. James’, Saranac Partners will serve as a private family office that also offers investment management, capital and financing advisory, structuring and fiduciary services, according to a statement to The Wall Street Journal. Staffed by executives from financial giants including BlackRock Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Kleinwort Benson, Woodford Investment Management, and Lombard Odier the boutique investment firm already has 27 employees and expects to add about a dozen more employees this year. Saranac’s statement said that 25% of the shares are held by the staff with a few private investors holding the majority of the shares. The chairman of Saranac’s investment committee is Richard Unwin, former head of BlackRock’s $73 billion fiduciary team in Europe.
A spokesman for Saranac said: “Our approach marries the art of private banking and its reliance on the quality of its people, with the insight and rigor modern technology affords. The founding partners have worked tirelessly to build a business and a team that, we believe, represent some of the best and the brightest the industry has to offer,” as reported in the WSJ.
The £301.4 billion ($398.7 billion) investment house Aberdeen Asset Management PLC, London-based membership club Pi Capital, and Australian software company Iress Ltd., have already agreed to strategic partnerships with Saranac.
After the Libor-rigging scandal at Barclays, the four musketeers became two with the 2012 departure of Diamond and del Missier. The restructuring by the new Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins, led the remaining musketeers, Kalaris and Ricci, to depart in 2013. After leaving Barclays, the musketeers worked in finance. Listed Africa banking group Atlas Mara was co-founded by Diamond in 2013. Private-equity firm Copper Street Capital was established by del Missier in 2015. Ricci joined the fintech sector as chairman of London-based currency exchange freemarketFX in 2016.
Kalaris’ Saranac Partners was named for the upstate New York lake near his former home. The boutique firm’s management committee also includes former Barclays managing directors Michelle Witter, Andrew Catterall, and Tanvi Davda, all with experience in investments and wealth management. Philip Dench- former European head of compliance at Lombard Odier, Gray Smith- Woodford Investment Management’s chief legal and compliance officer, and Len Gayler- former head of Cayenne Asset Management are also on the Saranac team with client advisers Jeremy Brown- former managing director of Kleinwort Benson’s private wealth management business, and Giovanni Revedin, formerly a managing director at J.P. Morgan, and nonexecutive director Mary Riley former partner at Deloitte.