Based in Long Beach, Calif., and with branch offices in San Diego; Denver; Houston; Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Bellevue, Wash., Halbert began life as a broker-dealer in 1933 and has since evolved into a forward-thinking outfit that strives to stay on the cutting edge of the advisory profession.
As part of its ongoing evolution, the next act in Halbert’s story centers on figuring out how to replace Russ Hill, 68, the longtime driving force and face of the firm who realizes it’s time to throttle back his role and let the next generation take over. Hill comes across as self-effacing when talking about his role at Halbert. But make no mistake—he has been every bit the main cog you’d expect from a leader who’s been at the same company for 44 years.
Hill doesn’t want to retire and spend the rest of his days picking olives at his vacation home in Tuscany, Italy. He plans to have some sort of future role at Halbert, even if he and the rest of the company aren’t sure what that will be.
“That hasn’t been worked out,” Hill says. “I’m having too much fun to leave, and I expect to be around for a while. It’s a tough thing to figure out.”
Meanwhile, a cadre of young leadership was duly deputized to take Halbert into the future when six thirtysomething staffers (some of them were twentysomethings at the time) were made directors a couple of years ago. At the same time, the company is going through a financial transition as it explores different ways to transfer some of Hill’s sizable 50% stake in the firm to other key employees.
Cookies And Wine
The firm opened its doors 81 years ago as Halbert, Hargrove & White. Russ’s father, Stan Hill, joined the broker-dealer as a salesman in 1943 and became a partner in the early 1960s. After Russ Hill got his undergraduate economics degree and his MBA from Stanford University, one of his father’s partners asked him to join as a salesman. Russ came on board in 1970 and initially took a draw of $500 a month against commissions, which he says earned him somewhat less than his classmates in those early years.
In 1973, Halbert had two other partners besides Stan Hill. One was nearing retirement and the other wanted to change careers. Russ Hill stepped in and bought them out. “Easy terms permitted their buyout,” he says. His father worked at Halbert for about 12 years after Russ joined, until he became ill. He died in December 1987.
Halbert had been a traditional stocks-and-bonds shop until the late 1960s, when it shifted to mainly mutual funds. In the 1970s and early 1980s, it started and operated several businesses, including a chain of cookie stores in West Germany and a winery. But the firm realized it needed to head in a different direction. It started and ended one RIA in the mid 1980s, and then started another one in the late 1980s called Halbert, Hargrove/Russell, which enabled it to bring the intellectual capital and institutional-quality money management acumen of the Frank Russell Co. (the precursor to global investment giant Russell Investments) to Halbert’s retail clients. It was never a co-ownership arrangement; rather, it was about branding and positioning Halbert in the marketplace.