Ares Management Corporation announced the formation of Ares Wealth Management Solutions (“WMS”). WMS will oversee the product development, distribution, marketing and client management activities across Ares’ investment offerings in the global wealth management channel. With a team of more than 90 fundraising and client service professionals, WMS will comprise one of the largest fundraising and client service teams dedicated to the wealth management channel in the alternatives industry.
Raj Dhanda has been named Ares’ Global Head of Wealth Management and will lead WMS. Prior to joining Ares in 2021, he was the Chief Executive Officer at Black Creek Group, which he joined in 2016. Previously, Mr. Dhanda spent 26 years at Morgan Stanley, where he held a variety of leadership roles, including leading key divisions of their institutional and wealth management platforms, Head of Investment Products and Services for their wealth management division, and serving on the Executive and Operating Committees for their wealth management division. In addition to Mr. Dhanda, each of Christina Adamson, Moshe Bajnon, Casey Galligan and Jeff Taylor have been named to senior leadership positions at WMS.
“Ares has been at the forefront of supporting the ‘democratization of alternatives’ and we have made significant investments across our platform through the years to onboard a range of investor types and sizes,” said Michael Arougheti, Chief Executive Officer of Ares. “We have made meaningful progress and are welcoming a rapidly growing number of individual investors into our strategies, but we are only scratching the surface of the opportunity. By establishing Ares Wealth Management Solutions under Raj, who is highly respected in the industry and a proven business builder, we believe we can create a differentiated offering for our retail clients while supporting substantial business growth for each of our investment groups.”
“Like our institutional clients, individual investors are highly focused on increasing their exposure to alternative investment strategies,” said Ryan Berry, Partner and Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer of Ares. “While there might be a shared objective, individuals have historically been more limited in how they could use alternatives to diversify and enhance their portfolios. Ares Wealth Management Solutions will seek to address these challenges by providing greater access to our credit, private equity, real estate and secondaries strategies and delivering outstanding client service.”
“The retail demand for alternative investments is significant and experiencing accelerated growth,” said Mr. Dhanda. “This move enhances the strong foothold that Ares already has built in the retail and high net worth channel, which today represents more than $45 billion of assets under management, and puts us in a better position to use Ares’ extensive relationships to further expand our distribution partnerships. Ares Wealth Management Solutions has a large and talented team. We are very excited by the opportunity to deliver institutional-quality solutions to individual investors around the globe and complement our existing publicly listed products.”