Multi-family offices

Bloomberg Wealth Manager has published its second annual review of multi-family offices (PDF download required). Assets managed by these competitors to trust departments grew by 26.6% last year. These are major firms--the mean amount under management was $1.0 billion, the median $2.8 billion. The account minimum ranges from $750,000 to $100 million, with $10 million being most typical.

Part of the growth in the last year came from the phenomenon of single family offices becoming clients of multifamily offices, presumably because it was too hard to keep up with the technological requirements on a standalone basis.

Although these organizations are primarily about asset management, 63% of them also offer trust management in-house, and 27% provide trust service on an out-sourced basis. Have any of you, our trust and private banking department clients, run into these companies? Do you consider them important competitors?