(Bloomberg News) Equilar, a provider of executive compensation data, is offering those who manage money a social-networking tool to attract high-net-worth clients.
Financial advisers at ten nationally ranked brokerage firms have joined Equilar Atlas, which officially went live last month and contains professional profiles of about 250,000 chief executive officers, board members and executive directors at almost 5,000 public companies and 5,000 nonprofits, according to David Chun, CEO and founder of Redwood City, California-based Equilar.
After subscribers load their contacts, the system automatically identifies and populates connections, so users can see who their contacts are connected to and use that as a reference point when reaching out, Chun said in an interview. The database initially is being marketed to brokerage firms, registered investment advisers, universities and nonprofits.
"This extends the social graph to see how you may be connected to a very exclusive network of individuals that frankly aren't out there on other sources" such as Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp., said Chun, who worked for six years as an investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. "We give people a turnkey social network that's already been built based on public information out there."
The database of potential clients may be vital as brokers and investment advisers try to attract more assets. Brokers at the largest full-service brokerage firms managed 38 percent of the $13.5 trillion U.S. wealth-management market in 2010, compared with 41 percent in 2007, according to data from research firm Aite Group LLC in Boston. Independent registered investment advisers have gathered an additional 2 percent of the market since 2007, bringing their share to about 11 percent.
Facebook, the world's largest social-networking service, doesn't share the number of CEOs at public companies who are users. LinkedIn counts executives from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies as members, said Krista Canfield, a spokeswoman for the Mountain View, California-based professional-networking website.
Unlike Palo Alto, California-based Facebook and LinkedIn, people in the Equilar database don't sign up to be a part of the network because they're automatically entered using public filings.
People in the database also don't have to agree to connect with subscribers and let them view their contacts. To be linked together, executives generally must have served on the same board for at least one year together or been at the executive level at the same firm for at least one year, Chun said.
'Money in Motion'
Equilar Atlas also contains compensation information, which is derived from filings including proxy statements and Form 4s, so users can see when payouts, such as stock vesting, are scheduled. The cost is $10,000 annually for unlimited access to the database for the first three users and $2,400 for each additional person.
"It gives you money in motion at a point in time when it matters," said Eric Harrison, a partner overseeing portfolio construction and investment in private vehicles at Los Angeles- based Luminous Capital investment advisory firm, which manages $4.6 billion for about 300 families.