HNWI Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Helen Brown Group

November 2, 2017 By Helen Brown

Creating a DIY wealth spreadsheet

“Sculpture at end of SW Coast Path in Minehead” by Nilfanion (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0] via Wikimedia Commons

My colleague Kenny Tavares frequently gets tasked with creating reference resources for the team to use. He’s the Excel Guru and the Macros Whisperer, and the staff meetings when he demonstrates his latest efficiency tech-bit are always highly anticipated by all of us. This week Kenny shares some of background data he sourced for one of his latest automated worksheets. Enjoy! ~Helen

Oh Happy Day! You have been asked to assess the wealth of an individual and that person works for and sits on the boards of publicly-traded companies, has several real estate properties listed in their name, and a yacht-load of tangible assets. It couldn’t be easier and you display the calm of someone who has chosen an easy profession…and then you wake up. [Read more…]

July 27, 2017 By Helen Brown

FOMO Cheat Sheet

Photo by Land Rover MENA (New Range Rover Sport joined the Jumbo Jet-Set) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on Prospect Research FOMO – that researcher’s Fear-of-Missing-infO guilt that forces you to keep looking for a piece of information when you know all hope is lost – but you just can’t stop. It’s a particularly gripping affliction for new-to-research-ers, but it never really goes away. [Read more…]

June 15, 2017 By Helen Brown

Gorilla Philanthropy

Art by Lieven Van Melckebeke

As I mentioned here on the blog a couple of weeks ago, a growing number of us on the HBG team are reading David Callahan’s latest book, The Givers; Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, and we meet weekly to talk about the latest chapter we’ve read.

Our discussions start with the book but we usually veer into the news of the day, pulling in observations from relevant and related articles from the New York Times, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, HistPhil, and more. [Read more…]

January 12, 2017 By Helen Brown

8 apps and sites every billionaire needs

Earlier this week, I was looking at my phone – and at all the apps I have and don’t use – and started thinking about how every person’s app collection looks different based on their individual needs and interests. I wondered how different my screen would look if I were a billionaire. (Hey, a girl can daydream). And so my journey of discovery began.

As I researched, I realized that many of the sites I was idly finding were actually useful for prospect research purposes. Which led me to abandoning my original mild curiosity and heading toward useful employment of my time, which is a good lesson in the power of daydreaming! [Read more…]

November 10, 2016 By Helen Brown

Super brokers in our fair city

Boston Skyline Over the Charles River

Last week one of our favorite fundraisers got in touch after reading Kelly Labrecque’s blog article about real estate super brokers in New York City.

Hey, what about us in New England? she asked. I work for a Boston-based nonprofit, and a lot of our donors are in the construction business.This would be a great allied group for us to tap into!

Great point. There are super brokers all over the world, and equally super resources to find out more information about them. [Read more…]

November 3, 2016 By Helen Brown

Super Brokers in the City

In considering those with high net wealth, we often think about the owners of luxury real estate, but not the people who make their (potentially sizeable) living helping them buy it. So this week, we’re delighted to welcome back HBG Senior Researcher Kelly Labrecque to share her deep knowledge and clear enthusiasm about researching real estate “Super Brokers.” ~Helen

In the world of luxury residential real estate, there is an elite group of men and women who represent some of the most exclusive listings and clientele. These top brokers, also known as “super brokers,” close deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

You can find super brokers all over the world, but with shows like Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing” and HGTV’s “Selling New York,” we have become most familiar with those in markets like Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, and New York City.

Since I have a particular fascination with real estate in Manhattan, I thought I’d share a few interesting facts about that market and its super brokers.

(Of course) Manhattan is expensive!

The average cost of an apartment in Manhattan is now just over $2 million.

Despite declining sales and increased marketing time, Douglas Elliman, the nation’s fourth largest real estate company, reported that the Manhattan residential real estate market experienced both higher prices and increased inventory in the third quarter of 2016 (July through September). In addition, there has been a surge in new development over the last year resulting in some astronomical sales prices.

For example, in September, the New York Times featured the sale of a full-floor penthouse at 432 Park Avenue for an astounding $87.66 million! Eight additional units in the building sold that same month, ranging in price from $18.98 million to $43.3 million.

And let’s not forget the record-breaking sales that closed in 2015 at One57 consisting of a duplex penthouse purchased by an anonymous buyer for $100.4 million and the “Winter Garden” duplex purchased by billionaire Bill Ackman and his associates for $91.5 million.

So what does that mean for super brokers? [Read more…]

September 22, 2016 By Helen Brown

Interviewing Venture Capital and Private Equity Professionals

Sometimes secondary research just doesn’t cut it. As fundraising professionals, we all know it’s important for us to understand the context of our prospects’ lives. But as much as you can read about private equity, venture capital, and all the other finance-related professions, nothing beats actually talking with people in that industry to find out how they would like to be cultivated and stewarded. I’m particularly delighted this week to shine a light on a project that University of Chicago researchers, Amelia Aldred and Namrata Padhi, undertook to interview professionals in the finance industry. In this week’s article, Amelia and Namrata share the questions and answers about these professionals that we all want to hear. ~Helen

The problem and our solution

In 2015, our prospect research team hit a wall when it came to understanding venture capital and private equity professionals. Like many of our research colleagues, our team read hundreds of articles about venture capital and private equity industries but we couldn’t find information specifically about venture capital and private equity professionals’ attitudes and behaviors regarding philanthropy, nor could we find information about compensation and wealth beyond a general industry overview.

Our solution? Change our research methods. Instead of reading, we directly interviewed venture capital and private equity professionals about their career path, compensation and wealth accumulation, networks, and how all of these factors affected their approach to giving. [Read more…]

July 7, 2016 By Helen Brown

Navigating the Changing Landscapes of Wealth & Philanthropy

This week we’re delighted to welcome HBG Research Associate Rachel Dakarian to the Intelligent Edge. Rachel and Elizabeth Roma will be presenting on July 28th at the APRA International Conference in Nashville, TN. I asked Rachel to give us a glimpse into their topic, and now I can’t wait to see the presentation! Follow Rachel on Twitter at @Rachel_Dakarian.

Bette Davis as Margo Channing in “All About Eve.” Her famous line, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” Painting by Trevor Heath. Source

Just when, exactly, did the “fasten seatbelt” sign turn on? 2016 has been an unexpectedly bumpy ride so far and we should prepare for ongoing turbulence. You might think we data junkies would be harder to spook after acclimating to the never-ending squawk of the 24-hour news cycle, but the constant stream of real-time information provided by social media continues to simultaneously help and hinder our ability to decipher signal from noise. [Read more…]

June 30, 2016 By Helen Brown

Gold nuggets from the Capgemini World Wealth Report 2016

It’s here! The 20^th anniversary Capgemini World Wealth Report is now available to be downloaded and discussed.

As in previous years, the Report’s high-beam focus has been on global high net worth individuals (HNWIs); their distribution geographically as well as the distribution of their assets, the world markets and how performance has affected portfolios in the past year, and what HNWIs need from their investment managers. [Read more…]

April 28, 2016 By Helen Brown

The Best Parts of the 2016 Sunday Times Rich List

You know that the Sunday Times Rich List came out this past weekend, right?

The list is a tremendous feat completed annually by Philip Beresford and Robert Watts (who will take over for Beresford later this year). For me it’s like someone showed up at my door handing me keys to a snappy convertible, a box of Lake Champlain chocolates, and a leash with a wee sleepy puppy at the end of it.

Yes, I’m self-aware about my tendency toward hyperbole, but seriously, I’m pretty sure I heard angels weeping on Sunday.

Wonderfully, the ST list of the top 1,000 wealthiest isn’t just one list, it’s actually 28 glorious lists. There’s some overlap, of course, but Beresford and Watts don’t just rehash and reorder the 1,000 – there are many more names to be found in the separate, searchable, lists. [Read more…]

The problem and our solution

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