Q: Would you give us a historical background of the firm?

A: After spending the first 16 years of my career at A.G. Edwards & Sons, I left the firm in May 2006 to form Mariner Wealth Advisors, LLC. At present, we have $3.8 billion assets under management.

We recently acquired Tortoise Capital Advisors, LLC, which is now a part of Mariner Asset Management, LLC. Tortoise specializes in managing portfolios of MLPs (Master Limited Partnership) securities and other energy companies for individual and institutional investors and closed-end funds. Tortoise’s platform adds four publicly traded closed-end funds as well as private funds and separately managed accounts to Mariner’s asset management business. The company currently has approximately $2.4 billion of assets under management.

Our company is focused on wealth and asset management. The asset management platform provides institutional investors, foundations and third party managers with high quality core and alternative investment strategies.

Q: Who is your typical client?

A: Our typical client is largely closely held business owners or former business owners. Most of our clients are high net worth or ultra high net worth individuals or institutions. They may not be completely liquid but we help our clients manage through that process as well. Generally, succession planning or passing wealth onto the next generation is where our relationship starts.

Q: What are your clients’ needs and how do you help them to achieve their goals?

A: The majority of our clients have already worked through the wealth creation phase. Our job is to help clients maintain and grow that wealth, but not really be the creator of that wealth. In other words, our mission is to help clients by developing and implementing prudent strategies which seek to maximize the creation and preservation of multigenerational wealth.

Firstly, We do not believe in taking big risk with our clients’ wealth but rather we work to ensure they get a good return and then help them keep it. Secondly, we help our clients sustain that wealth by managing and passing it on in a tax efficient manner.

Q: Could you give some examples of different services that you provide to clients?

A: Our clients have varying asset sizes. For instance, a client may come to us with illiquid investments that make up their net worth and consist of a home or two. What is more important to clients when they come to us is passing that money to the next generation in an efficient manner. It is a bigger part of their goals and objectives that they’re trying to accomplish. We have repetitive processes in place to review and implement clients’ goals consistently to create multigenerational wealth.

The second example of a client situation is that of our quasi family office where we take on other responsibilities for our clients. Some of our high net worth clients want help in buying personal assets like a car or boat or plane. We might help them with that as there are times when the ultra high net worth are in a stage they never have been before and don’t know the questions to ask or the pitfalls of such an acquisition. In these situations, we’ve been able to help clients avoid a lot of headaches and money wasted through that process. For example, setting up the acquisition of a jet plane in a separate limited liability company so that it is not considered a charter service and is subject to excise tax and also, making sure the client has the right insurance coverage on that plane to protect the family.

Q: Do you consider yourself a financial planning or an investment management firm?

A: Our objective is to do a manager-of-managers approach from the investment standpoint but really bring more of a financial planning focus to the firm. To fulfill this objective we have a staff of 61 which includes Certified Financial Planners and Chartered Financial Analysts focused on wealth preservation & wealth creation.

We consider ourselves both a financial planning firm and an investment management firm. Each of those disciplines operates independent of each other.

The asset allocation and the individual selection of the portfolio is done by the investment team once the goals and objectives of the clients are set through the planning process. We’ll do accounting for the clients and run their income statement and balance sheets. Then after we have gathered information and presented it to them, we walk them through the planning process of what they want to accomplish.

Q: What is your investment management process?

A: We believe one can achieve superior returns for high net worth individuals and institutions by designing portfolios with superior risk/reward characteristics while thinking opportunistically.

We are implementing that philosophy through “best of breed” managers coupled with in-house asset management, creating increased tax efficiencies, reduced expenses, and greater control.

We start out with the traditional nine investment style boxes and select three to five managers that we believe are best in each. Then, we do traditional equity allocation for all of those nine style boxes and add alternatives to the mix, which could be private equity or hedge funds, depending again on the risk tolerance of the client, ensuring we are managing to those tolerances.