What We Do
Three service lines.
One discipline.
Inorganic growth in asset management has compounding economics when it is done well — and disproportionate downside when it is not. Each of our service lines exists because the alternatives buyers reach for first are usually slower, more expensive, or less durable than they look.
01 / Service
Team Liftouts
A liftout is the simultaneous transition of an entire investment or distribution team from one firm to another, together with their portable track record and an institutional asset trail.
The Warren Enskat definition
A liftout is only a liftout if the team brings a marketable track record and a portable asset trail sufficient to make the engagement profitable for the acquiring firm within twelve to eighteen months.
Moving a group of people, on its own, is not a liftout. Hiring multiple individuals into the same seat is not a liftout. Both happen often, both are routinely mislabeled, and both fail to produce the economics that a true liftout produces.
How we run the process
We work with clients to define the strategic gap, identify candidate teams that are not in the market, structure the economics, anticipate the legal and operational frictions of departure, and integrate the team into the cultural fabric of the acquiring firm.
Liftouts are rarely linear. Defending firms frequently respond with counter-offers, retention packages, and litigation. Experienced intermediaries reduce the probability of a deal collapsing in the final hours and the probability of post-close attrition once it has closed.
Track record on retention
Every team Warren Enskat has placed since 1993 remains with the firm we placed them with.
Representative engagement
Newfleet Asset Management
We structured the transition of David Albrycht’s eight-person fixed-income team from The Hartford into Virtus Investment Partners. The team brought $5.2 billion in assets with them and today manages $16.9 billion at Newfleet Asset Management, a Virtus boutique built around the team. The full eight-person team remains in Hartford.
02 / Service
Boutique Acquisitions
Buying a small specialist firm is the most efficient way to add a capability that cannot be hired in piecemeal. The challenge is that the acquisitions that deliver are very different from the ones that look attractive on a banker’s pitch.
Where we add value
We work with clients on capability mapping (what gap does the acquisition actually fill, and is it the right gap), target identification within the universe of boutiques that are not formally for sale, valuation grounded in distribution economics rather than headline AUM, structure (earn-outs, equity rollovers, key-person retention), and post-close cultural integration.
The same disciplines that make a liftout durable — portable track record, retained leadership, cultural compatibility — apply at the firm level.
Why a specialist intermediary
Investment-banking-led processes optimize for sale price and clearing the room. Boutique acquisitions in asset management need to optimize for retention of the people who built the track record, because the acquired firm is, in most cases, the team. A process that wins the auction and loses the team produces a write-down within three years.
03 / Service
Strategic Partnerships
Not every gap is a liftout candidate, and not every capability is worth acquiring outright. Strategic partnerships let firms expand their reach or rationalize their footprint without the capital commitment of an acquisition.
Where we add value
We work on partnership structures across the public and private markets, including sub-advisory mandates, distribution alliances, joint product development, and large-scale transitions of business lines. Many of these mandates emerge from strategic reviews where management has concluded that a given capability is sub-scale or non-core, and where the right outcome is a partnership rather than a sale.
Representative engagement
Allianz Global Investors → Virtus Investment Partners
In 2020 and 2021, we advised on the strategic partnership between Allianz Global Investors and Virtus Investment Partners in the U.S. retail market. The transaction transferred approximately $33 billion in U.S. assets, structured as $25 billion of sub-advisory and distribution partnership and an $8 billion liftout of NFJ Investment Group from Allianz Global Investors into Virtus, where NFJ became a new value equity affiliate. The transaction was structured and executed during the operational constraints of the COVID period.