JPMorgan is building a unit for the world’s wealthiest families in a bet on wealth.
The “23 Wall” unit focuses on about 700 people worth more than $4.5 trillion.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. has quietly built a global unit that caters to the super-rich and their investment firms as part of its plan to offer more services to the world’s super-rich.
The business was started just before the pandemic and is now run by JPMorgan veteran Andy Cohen. It has about 30 employees in the US, Asia, and Europe and works closely with the firm’s investment and private banks in New York.
The unit’s name, “23 Wall,” comes from the fact that the bank’s old Manhattan offices were right next to the New York Stock Exchange. Cohen says it is about 700 people worth more than $4.5 trillion.
Cohen, the executive chairman of JPMorgan Global Wealth Management, said in an interview from the company’s London office that “we built this from the ground up.” Cohen is 56 years old. “We will keep getting bigger.”
Global banks are trying to get a more significant piece of the wealth made in recent years. This is making the race for the world’s biggest sums very tough. JPMorgan’s private bank opened 40,000 new accounts in the past ten weeks. Last year, the bank added about one new client a day with assets of $100 million or more, said Mary Erdoes, CEO of asset and wealth management, at the company’s investor day.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is also growing its private-banking services and focusing more on family offices. Last year, Citigroup Inc. opened new private-banking offices as part of a plan to increase returns.
The move shows how the biggest banks are adjusting to the fact that the world’s wealthiest people and families are getting better at managing their money. They are choosing to do this more and more through family offices and loosely controlled money managers who usually work for one or a few very wealthy people.
Cohen, who has worked at JPMorgan for over 20 years, said, “My job is to work with large, multinational families and family offices.”
Michelle Chen used to be a senior China technology banker at JPMorgan. In February, she switched teams and now leads 23 Wall’s work in North Asia. The company also hires people from outside, like Henry Knapman, who came from UBS Group AG and worked in London last year, and Gabriel Bochi, who came from Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA and will work on Latin American clients in 2021.
Cohen runs 23 Wall with the help of other JPMorgan wealth executives. His team of relationship managers and investment professionals work in a dozen places in six countries, including Paris, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. About half of its customers come from the US.
The unit doesn’t have a base level of wealth, but it serves the wealthiest 0.01%.
“Types of Customers” Cohen said, “Most of our clients have a mix of public and private assets, real estate, and a commitment to the community and philanthropy. They are also becoming more interested in private deals.”
Investors worldwide are having a hard time with their money because inflation is going up, and interest rates are going up. However, many ultra-wealthy are seeing their fortunes grow in 2023, primarily because of rising tech values in the US. The total wealth of the world’s 500 wealthiest people has increased by about $500 billion this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Many family offices want to invest that money in public and private stocks. For example, Stanley Druckenmiller’s Duquesne Family Office and David Tepper’s Appaloosa Management have recently bought a lot of stocks in the artificial intelligence sector, which is growing quickly.
Cohen is from Australia and joined JPMorgan in 1999. Before taking on his current job, he was in charge of the company’s international and Asia private banks.
He said that the idea for 23 Wall came from CEO Jamie Dimon and Erdoes’s chat in 2019. He led the unit at first from Hong Kong but then moved to London.
Even though JPMorgan hasn’t been at 23 Wall Street for decades, and the building is mainly used for special events now, Cohen thinks the name of his unit means more than that.
“The name shows the company’s long history,” he said. “We wanted to pick a name that reflected our 200 years of work in business worldwide.”
