MutualFundWire.com: San Fran Start-Up Eyes Japanese Advisors

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Thursday, May 4, 2000

San Fran Start-Up Eyes Japanese Advisors

AdvisorTech, a San Francisco- based financial services company, has raised $125 million in a private placement from Whitney & Co., First Union Capital Partners, Chase Capital Partners, Chase H&Q, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and others. This private placement follows an initial $20 million of private capital raised a year earlier from Whitney, H&Q, H&Q Asia Pacific, and Timothy McCarthy, the ex-president of Charles Schwab, and AdvisorTech's CEO and founder.

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AdvisorTech appears to have designs on a space in the Japanese market similar to that held in the US by mutual fund platforms such as Charles Schwab's OneSource and Fidelity's FundsNetwork. A company spokesperson said that AT is the first licensed Internet broker/dealer focused exclusively on the financial intermediaries of Japan, a group which has grown to 73,000 in 2000 from 8,000 in 1995.

"With the Big Bang in Japan, intermediaries are no longer locked into selling just proprietary funds," said the spokesperson, adding that AdvisorTech already has relationships with several leading fund companies, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Scudder Kemper, Invesco, Credit Suisse, and others.

Their sales pitch in a nutshell? AdvisorTech will provide both back-end support and a front-end interface for non-US advisors, intermediaries and institutions. Its services will also include research and portfolio analysis of the funds in its network.

Assisting McCarthy in the venture is chief investment officer Jonathan Tiemann, and Mark Wildermuth, president and chief technology officer. Prior to joining AdvisorTech, Wildermuth was president of Fidelity Investments Brokerage Technologies Group and Tiemann was president and chief investment officer of BARRA RogersCasey Asset Services Group, Inc.

Another recent addition is Dennis Clark, another ex-Schwabie, who joined AdvisorTech early this year as senior vice president of sales and marketing. Clark had been instrumental in introducing Schwab's Global OneSource for non-US investors in off-shore funds in 1997.

To date, AdvisorTech has more than 100 financial advisory clients including one of Japan's largest brokerage firms, Nikko Securities. AdvisorTech will also be pursuing opportunities to expand into other Asian countries, as well as Europe.

Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=25703

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