Waterfield Advisors launches family office consortium

City-based multi-family office Waterfield Advisors has launched an exclusive consortium of family offices in association with New Delhi-based Dalmia Group Holdings and 20 other leading business families. The consortium will explore investment opportunities by pooling together not just its capital but also its collective intellect, network and domain-expertise.

"In association with Dalmia Group Holdings, we have just launched a consortium of family offices, a first in the country. We already have 20 leading family offices as members," Soumya Rajan, founder and managing director of the eight-year-old Waterfield Advisors told PTI. The consortium will enable like-minded family offices to come together and invest in large assets as an institutional investor, she adds.

Waterfield works with 50 leading business families and manages over USD 2.5 billion of their financial assets offering advisory services on a fee only model, free from any conflict of interest unlike peers who also hawk others products for a fee. It has offices in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Bangaluru. Family offices have become a powerful sector among businessmen since the past decade. As per a global report by UBS-Campden Wealth, family offices now manage assets over USD 5.9 trillion globally. Similarly, number of family offices globally rose to 10,000 as of 2018, a 10-fold jump since 2008.

As per Campden Wealth India report, there are over 1.5 lakh ultra-high networth families in the country with a cumulative networth of USD 2 trillion and this number is slated to jump to 4 lakh families by 2025, with a networth of USD 5 trillion. Their average wealth is USD 645 million and an average family office AUM is USD 318 million as of 2018. Explaining the rationale for launching the consortium, Rajan says there is an increasing appetite among the rich for direct investments and more active participation in strategic management of such investments as returns from fund investments have been inconsistent.

"Family offices are increasingly completing deals with each other or banding together on direct investments. On the investing side, more benefits come when efforts are combined across family offices by pooling capital, talent, domain- expertise, and due diligence to evaluate a deal etc. Rajan also says the consortium is designed to encourage deal flow among premier families and provide benefit of "patient capital" and mentoring to potential opportunities.

Initially the consortium will have 20 diverse business families who will step up from participating in informal regional networks to an organised, national deal platform. Being part of the consortium will enable the member families to be part of large transactions which would have otherwise remained beyond their radar individually, she says, adding, the other benefits include better hedge it offers against adverse outcomes and building on sector expertise of participating families in evaluating transactions.

On his family's participation,Gaurav Dalmia, chairman, Dalmia Family Holdings, told PTI, "we have been a part of informal clubs, with select family offices, both Indian and international, and some institutions, and the results have been very encouraging. Our aim is to build on that." Traditionally, high networth investors have restricted their focus on conservation of wealth. That has now changed and today they seek alpha, their edge--longer time horizon, better domain knowledge, network effects--is beginning to show up in returns, he adds..