Having a successful career in finance can make one feel privileged and powerful. But the death of his 21-year-old daughter 10 years ago taught Eric Becker, the co-founder and co-chairman of Cresset Asset Management, that personal tragedy can strike anyone. “It was a kind of crushing, bone-breaking disappointment that no parent should ever have to experience,” he says.
Speaking with Barron’s Advisor, Becker, a former private-equity entrepreneur whose current multifamily-office business manages $23 billion of client assets, explains how the loss changed the direction of his life. He reveals why Cresset doesn’t have private-equity backing even though it was founded by two private-equity veterans, invests heavily in private opportunities, and serves a number of private-equity executives. And he explains why it was so important to connect his clients with the likes of Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, and Walter Isaacson.
Cresset is unusual in that 35% of the business is owned by your clients. What’s the backstory? [Cresset co-founder and co-chairman] Avy Stein and I were lifelong entrepreneurs. We had had our own private-equity firms, we both were retired, and we were co-investing out of our own family offices. We had some frustration in terms of accessing the very best ideas, the very best GPs [general partners] of funds, the very best investments. And so we started researching the family-office space to see if there were other options for our own families. That research ultimately led us to launching Cresset as a platform for entrepreneurs, CEO founders, and families.
Initially, Avy and I viewed this as an employee-owned platform. But in the first year, a number of the clients coming on expressed enthusiasm for what we were doing and asked if they could be a part of it. So by now, 35% of the platform is owned by the clients, and 65% is owned by the employees.
