Emigrant announced the appointment of Liz Nesvold as Vice Chair of Emigrant Bank. Nesvold has served the wealth management industry for over 30 years as a passionate advisor, investment banker, and executive. A proud advocate and mentor for women in financial services, Nesvold was described by Mergers & Acquisitions magazine as the most experienced female investment banker serving the investment management and securities industry and was recognized with the M&A Advisor’s Leadership Award in 2021, in addition to being acknowledged as a Woman to Watch by InvestmentNews in 2019.
Emigrant is one of the wealth management industry’s most sophisticated multifamily office co-investment platforms and among its many other businesses, Emigrant owns Emigrant Bank, the largest family-owned and operated banking institution in the nation, and Emigrant Partners, a long-term capital and strategic advisory services partner that makes non-voting minority investments into wealth and asset managers.
Collectively, EP’s portfolio includes 20 partner firms with over $100 billion in assets under management and advisement and in excess of $400 million of combined revenues. And EP’s team provides strategic advice and guidance to its partner firms to facilitate ongoing growth, while also providing financing to support inorganic growth by acquisition to its existing portfolio companies. EP has invested over $530 million of long-duration capital in 30 wealth and asset management companies over 17+ year history of supportive minority partnering. Emigrant collaborated with management teams from 10 partner firms seeking majority strategic sales and recapitalizations, to optimize outcomes for all parties.
Specifically, in her new roles Nesvold will partner with John Hart, Vice Chair of Emigrant Bank, responsible for Emigrant’s three private trust companies, and with Jenny Souza, President and CEO of Emigrant Partners, where Nesvold will serve as Chair.
Nesvold’s experience includes mergers and acquisitions, capital planning and fundraising, succession and liquidity planning, strategic advisory, compensation structuring, deep-dive financial and business analysis, and organic growth consulting. And she started her career providing advisory services to RIAs in 1991 at Berkshire Capital, where she co-founded the investment banking industry’s first-ever specialist M&A practice serving wealth management firms. In 2007, she also launched Silver Lane, a boutique investment bank that routinely ranked as the #1 or #2 most active M&A advisor to the wealth and asset management industry. Nesvold and her partners sold Silver Lane to a Fortune 500 company in 2019, and she retired from investment banking four years later to join the wealth management industry.
Emigrant Bank worked formally with Nesvold since 2017. In that year, Nesvold and her partners represented the Bank when it sold HPM Partners (now Cerity Partners) to Lightyear, and followed up that mandate with the sale of EP partner firm, Pathstone, to Lovell Minnick Partners. And she also represented six other firms in which EP invested or sold, working closely on those projects with Mr. Milstein and Barry Friedberg, Co-Chair of the Board of Emigrant Bank.
KEY QUOTES:
“I’m thrilled to have finally recruited Liz to the team after collaborating with her on multiple transactions over the past decade. Liz will work closely with all units of the bank that are engaged in, or provide solutions to, the wealth management business, including Emigrant Partners (“EP”), New York Private Trust, Sarasota Private Trust, and Cleveland Private Trust, as well as our business units serving the high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth markets, such as Summitas and Personal Risk Management Solutions.”
“I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Howard, Barry and the EP team for more than a decade, and this opportunity presented itself at an important time. As the wealth management industry becomes increasingly complex, now more than ever, leaders of wealth management firms need strategic partners who understand their businesses – especially the sanctity of the fiduciary duty owed to clients – and the opportunities ahead. Emigrant’s platform is uniquely aligned to sponsor independence and help drive the next wave of growth for this industry.”
– Howard Milstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Emigrant
“My relationship with Liz dates back some 25 years, having been recruited by her into investment banking straight out of college. As advisors to wealth and asset managers in the decades since, we’ve collaborated professionally many times. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work closely with Liz again, and to leverage the depth of her industry expertise and reach, which are second to none, to the benefit of the EP team and our network of partner firms.”
– Jenny Souza
“Liz’s partnership with Jenny mirrors another Emigrant story. I recruited Howard Milstein out of graduate school to join me at Warburg Paribas Becker in the late 1970s.” After several years working together, Mr. Milstein left to join his family’s businesses and Mr. Friedberg went on to run Merrill Lynch’s global investment banking business for a decade. “In 2003, I retired from Merrill Lynch, and Howard recruited me to join the Milstein organization.” Milstein adds, “It has been a partnership made for the century with Barry, and I know it will be the same for Jenny and Liz.”
– Barry Friedberg
