Cresset's $4B UBS grab resets the RIA pitch

Cresset, the Chicago RIA, said Tuesday that a 16-person team managing $4 billion in UBS Wealth Management USA's private wealth unit has joined the firm in Boca Raton, Florida, a move that resets the breakaway floor for the next ultra-high-net-worth group. Led by Michael A. Bober and Ettore D. Ventrice, the departure clarifies what teams at the very top of the wealth spectrum are pricing when they run the breakaway math.

At UBS the group was known as the BV Group, according to the former firm website, and Bober and Ventrice both started at Smith Barney in 1992 before working through Stillpoint Wealth, Stanford Group and Oppenheimer & Co. and landing at UBS in 2015, per BrokerCheck. The roster also includes advisors Michael MacDonald, William Marino, Sarah Ponczek and Alex Santos.

Ventrice framed the decision as a model choice, saying Cresset's family-office approach aligns with the team's belief that wealth should be managed with a comprehensive, long-term perspective extending beyond investment management. That is the family-office wrapper Cresset, which oversees more than $260 billion in client assets, has been selling since Susie Cranston, a former First Republic executive, became CEO in March. The recruiting run has been aggressive: in July it pulled an advisor managing $600 million from Manchester Capital Management and a team overseeing $1.1 billion from Lazard Asset Management, with the UBS group the largest of the three.

The liftout lands in a rough stretch for UBS's advisor ranks, with the wirehouse losing at least 27 teams managing $28 billion in assets during the first six months of this year, according to an AdvisorHub tally, and defections going to RBC Wealth Management, Rockefeller Global Family Office and Morgan Stanley among others. UBS restructured its Florida market in May, replacing Lane Strumlauf with Rick Penafiel in a new South Florida market and Tyler Hutchens in Greater Florida, so the $4 billion team's exit three months later suggests the fix has not fully landed, though the firm did pull a $300 million team from Morgan Stanley earlier this month.

For advisors watching from a wirehouse desk, the relevant number is not the $4 billion in assets but the structure of the deal: Cresset is selling a family-office wrapper and the platform to support it, not just a transition check. Platform capital, not just transition cash, is now the price of retention. The next $1 billion team will run the same math, and the firm that cannot match the family-office model will keep losing the biggest books.