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Ultrawealthy families, endowments, foundations and others can turn to Hall Capital Partners, LLC for help managing their investment portfolios and vast wealth. Hall Capital Partners is a registered investment advisor with a team of over 170 employees who help oversee more than $48 billion in assets under management (AUM). Hall Capital places particular emphasis on building a diverse team, and it also incorporates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and sustainability issues into its investment process.
The bottom line: Hall Capital Partners is a San Francisco-based firm that focuses on serving the ultrawealthy, providing personalized advice and incorporating ESG factors.
| Assets under management: $48,054,574,293 | |
| Minimum investment: Clients generally invest over $100 million, though no minimum exists | |
| Individual investor to advisor ratio: 4:1 | |
| Fee structure: A percentage of AUM, fixed fees, performance-based fees | |
| Headquarters: One Maritime Plaza, 6th Floor San Francisco, CA 94111 Website: www.hallcapital.com Phone: (415) 288-0544 |
All information included in this profile is accurate as of January 21, 2022. For more information, please consult Hall Capital Partners’ website.
Founded in 1994, Hall Capital Partners has since grown to employ over 170 workers, with locations in San Francisco, where it’s headquartered, and an additional office in New York City. A nearly 30-person research group is responsible for identifying, researching and monitoring thousands of third-party investment managers.
Hall Capital Partners is majority owned by the firm’s partners.
Kathryn Hall founded her eponymous firm in 1994, initially to manage investments for a few family offices and their foundations. Just five years earlier, she had launched a risk arbitrage investment partnership, and prior to that, she worked in investment roles at HFS Management Partners and Morgan Stanley, among others.
She has held high profile roles on the boards of various organizations, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Princeton University, including the university’s investment company. Today, Hall serves as managing director and co-chair of the firm.
The firm mainly works with a small number of deep-pocketed families and institutions. About 115 of its clients are high net worth individuals and families, which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) defines as those with at least $750,000 in assets under management or a net worth of more than $1.5 million. Rounding out the firm’s client list are institutions, such as endowments, foundations, charities, pooled investment vehicles, pension and profit-sharing plans and other investment advisors.
No across-the-board minimum investment requirement exists, but most clients who want a custom portfolio invest at least $100 million in assets. The annual advisory charge is typically a minimum of $400,000 (or $300,000 on accounts with a performance-based fee), making the firm suitable only for uber-wealthy investors. The firm also offers pooled investment vehicles that may require minimum investments of $1 million to $3 million.
Additionally, most of the firm’s clients are accredited investors and qualified purchasers, labels typically given to sophisticated investors who meet certain income or asset thresholds and can invest in unregistered investment products, such as private equity and hedge funds.
Hall Capital Partners offers custom portfolios for clients that span multiple asset classes and countries. Clients can choose to have a portfolio manager take control of the daily decision-making for the account, which is a discretionary arrangement, or clients can opt for a non-discretionary relationship that leaves the client responsible for approving each trade.
In addition to investment management, clients can tap the team’s expertise for multi-generational wealth planning in general, addressing topics such as philanthropy, family governance and wealth transfer. The team also offers portfolio accounting and reporting.
Alongside the aforementioned investor services, Hall Capital manages more than 60 pooled investment vehicles that invest primarily in private funds. The team believes these vehicles give clients access to broader diversification than they’d be able to access on their own. Some clients in those funds are advisory clients of the firm; others are not.
Here is a complete list of services offered to families by Hall Capital Partners:
Clients can expect to first set their investment goals and objectives, such as a policy statement, with their advisor or team. After asset allocation strategies are agreed upon, the advisor will construct an appropriate investment portfolio. The bulk of client portfolios are typically customized global multi-asset class portfolios, which the firm builds depending on a client’s needs.
Client funds are generally invested in a wide variety of underlying managers, such as managers of private funds, separate accounts and some mutual funds. Clients also have the option to invest in pooled vehicles managed by Hall Capital or its affiliates that offer commingled investment strategies, as well as in specialized mandates that offer exposure to a specific asset class, such as private equity. Portfolios typically include a global mix of the following:
Hall Capital Partners’ research team is responsible for identifying and conducting due diligence on thousands of underlying investment managers. The firm strongly favors managers who use fundamental analysis, meaning they work to calculate a true value for an investment based on company-specific and industry factors like macroeconomic conditions, industry trends, financial statements and competition. The team also incorporates factors like social issues, sustainability of business models and environmental issues into their decision-making process, as the leaders believe that a deep understanding of these issues can drive long-term performance. All managers must be approved by founder Kathryn Hall and the two co-chief investment officers before clients can invest in them.
Hall Capital does not have a trading desk, and thus does not recommend individual publicly traded stocks.
Hall Capital Partners charges an annual fee calculated as a percentage of assets under management. The firm’s fee schedule is tiered, meaning the more money a client invests, the lower their rate.
Clients can choose between paying a higher annual percentage rate or a lower annual rate coupled with a performance-based fee, where the advisory firm takes a slice of the investment gains, say, 10% or so, when the portfolio outperforms a certain benchmark.
Here are the firm’s standard fee schedules, although Hall Capital Partners notes that it has negotiated lower fee schedules with certain clients.
| Advisory Fee Option 1: Base Fee Only* | |
|---|---|
| Assets Under Management | Annual Rate |
| First $500 million | 0.35% |
| Next $500 million | 0.25% |
| All assets above $1 billion | 0.20% |
| *Minimum fee of $400,000 per year. | |
| Advisory Fee Option 2: Base Fee plus Performance-Based Fee* | |
|---|---|
| Assets Under Management | Annual Rate |
| First $500 million | 0.25%, plus a performance fee of 10%** |
| Next $500 million | 0.15%, plus a performance fee of 10% |
| All assets above $1 billion | 0.10%, plus a performance fee of 10% |
| *Minimum fee of $300,000 per year.
**Returns must meet certain benchmarks before the performance fee applies. |
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On top of these advisory fees, clients will owe fees for underlying fund managers, separate accounts, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and mutual funds. Underlying managers may charge management fees as high as 3%, as well as a percentage of earnings. Clients are also responsible for transaction costs, including brokerage and custodian fees. The firm does not offer wrap accounts in which transaction costs are included in one bundled fee.
Non-advisory clients who invest in the firm’s pooled vehicles that charge management fees generally pay up to 1.25%, plus perhaps a percentage of returns. Clients are generally not charged an advisory fee in addition to the pooled vehicle management fee.
Hall Capital Partners has no disclosures over the last 10 years, and thus has a clean disciplinary record. All registered investment advisors are required by the SEC to disclose on their Form ADV any civil, criminal or regulatory actions against the firm, its employees or its affiliates that clients would deem material when evaluating the firm or the integrity of the management team.
For further information on Hall Capital Partners, visit the firm’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) page.
Potential clients can contact the firm directly at their New York or San Francisco offices, or they can email the firm through the contact page on its website.
Once a formal relationship is established in writing, clients can expect to have quarterly meetings, phone calls or other communication where they discuss their portfolios, performance and recommended changes. Communication can also occur in between these quarterly meetings. Clients can expect to receive detailed written reports and statements on a quarterly basis as well.
Hall Capital Partners has office locations only in San Francisco and New York. However, the firm is registered to work with investors in a handful of other states, including Delaware, Massachusetts and Texas.
Individuals and families with more than $100 million to invest can consider Hall Capital Partners. These families may find attractive the host of services offered in addition to portfolio management, such as advice on education planning, stock compensation, wealth transfer and family governance issues, as well as accounting and reporting on complicated funds. Clients may also like the firm’s emphasis on employee diversity, as well as its consideration of certain environmental, social and governance issues.
Investors without such deep pockets, however, will need to look elsewhere. Fortunately, plenty of other registered investment advisors exist to serve clients without $1 million or more to invest. Whenever you’re looking for a financial advisor, it’s always a good idea to research and interview two or three different candidates, taking notes on the exact services they offer as well as how they are compensated. The variance can be wide, so it’s important to take the time to find the right financial advisor for your financial situation.
Amanda GenglerAmanda Gengler has been researching and writing about finance for more than 15 years. She honed her personal finance writing as a journalist at Money magazine for a decade.
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