Sanctuary Wealth Adds $1.2B UBS Team in California

An Orange County, Calif.-based firm managing about $1.2 billion in client assets is joining Sanctuary Wealth from UBS.

Dial Square Private Wealth was founded by Jim Chiate and Tony Guianne, who first partnered at Merrill Lynch in 2003 before joining UBS in 2013. They’ll be joined by Owen Galasso, as vice president, registered operations manager, and Nazgol Nekoomaram, as vice president, wealth associate. The team will custody with Schwab and Goldman Sachs.

According to Chiate, the firm didn’t make the decision to go independent lightly, but once they did, Sanctuary became “the obvious choice.”

“While we could have easily moved to another traditional wirehouse or private bank, once we understood the evolution of the independent space over the last decade, we couldn’t ignore the value independence would provide to our clients,” Chiate said.

According to Chiate, the move to Sanctuary offers back-office support with access to alternative investments, tax mitigation strategies and philanthropic legacy building.

Sanctuary acts as a hybrid RIA, with more than 125 partner firms in 32 states on the platform (totaling over $55 billion in assets either on its platform or in transition). The firm has backing from the Italy-based asset manager Azimut, as well as Kennedy Lewis Investment Management.

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In the past year, Sanctuary brought in 16 partner firms with over $10 billion in assets, including 1280 Financial Partners, another former UBS team managing about $2 billion with offices in Florida, Ohio and South Carolina. 

In addition to wealth management services, 1280’s team includes an institutional consulting division, with asset management for insurance, corporate, government, nonprofit and endowment clients. The company will also offer a captive insurance business to other Sanctuary partner firms, which it said was “rarely available” in the independent space.

Earlier this year, Sanctuary also attracted Hillguard Wealth Management, a $700 million Miami-based team managing assets for about 20 U.S. and international families.