Grayhawk Wealth specializes in global and multi-asset portfolios for ultra-high-net-worth families, their family offices, foundations and small institutions. But CEO Aurélie Jaclot is mindful that this “chief investment office” fulfills a wider role for the very wealthy families of Canada.
Jaclot studied business and finance in Paris and London and holds an asset management certificate from Wharton. She worked in wealth management at Merrill Lynch in London, and more recently in Swiss boutiques Lombard Odier, in London, and Pictet & Cie, in Paris.
She came to Canada in 2020 to open Grayhawk’s Montreal operation and in 2023 became CEO when Michael Kaumeyer, who founded the company in 2016, stepped down from the position.
Today Grayhawk, with a team of 20, $1.3 billion in assets under management and offices in Calgary and Toronto as well as Montreal, where Jaclot is based, offers exclusive access to institutional-quality investments to wealthy, sophisticated families. It has formed an equity partnership with Sagard Holdings, the alternative asset manager led by Paul Desmarais III, allowing Grayhawk to leverage Sagard’s Canadian and global network and resources.
In an interview with Canadian Family Offices, Jaclot talks about what brought her to Grayhawk, how the company’s independent approach serves very wealthy families and foundations, and what she sees ahead in the alternatives space.
What attracted you to Grayhawk?
I was absolutely amazed when I met with our founder, Michael Kaumeyer, to discover that Grayhawk had a model that is very widespread in the UK, in France and I would say probably equally in the U.S. It’s to accompany wealthy families in a different way, based on three pillars: independent thinking, an institutional approach and building a vibrant ecosystem around them.
Why is independence important?
It allows our team to separate the advice from the manufacturing of the product. If you receive commissions on the products that you recommend, you are often not picking the best.
What’s unique about your institutional approach?
What we want to do with Grayhawk is provide pension fund-like portfolio construction to wealthy families that is global and multi-asset. When you look at the wealth-management industry in Canada, you’ve got banks on one side and you’ve got pension funds. With the pension funds, I was super impressed to see that they’re among the best managed in the world. Their model and performance over the years has been very inspiring. The banks have strong models, but they mainly focus on traditional and North American investments, the international aspect is limited.
When we look at our clients’ overall wealth, we always take a holistic approach. Canada is already well represented, because most of them have or had a business in Canada, they have a lot of roots and interest in Canada, all of them have real estate in Canada. Hence the need to think more internationally.
What’s the best way to offer these investments?
When you look in France, in the UK, in Switzerland, alternative asset classes have been composing a large part of portfolios for many years. And with this institutional approach, as soon as you want to offer global and multi-asset portfolios, it takes specialists, and our view is very much that you should get the expertise where it sits. So if you’re looking to invest in Europe, find a European manager.
And your third pillar, an ecosystem for clients?
It’s very important for us at Grayhawk to build meaningful relationships with our client families. That means a patriarch and a matriarch, of course, but it also means the children and all of the people surrounding the family. Our role is to facilitate introductions with all of the specialists who can help client families manage their wealth: tax advisers, estate planners, philanthropy specialists, governance specialists, etc.
That sounds like you’re a family office, providing such services?
Yes and no. We prefer to call ourselves a chief investment office. We look at clients’ overall situation and look to complement what they’re doing. These are busy people, and coordinating and ensuring that information flows to tax advisers, financial planners, etc., takes a chef d’orchestre. That’s the role we play.
How do you connect your clients to specialized investments?
We offer them exclusive access to world-class institutional managers that are hard to access for many reasons. Sometimes they’re not present in Canada. Sometimes they’re closed to new investors. Sometimes they don’t work with families. So it takes a Grayhawk to get to them.
Any examples of their assets?
We invest in all asset classes, whether more traditional markets, fixed income, equity, but very importantly, alternatives. So that’s private credit, private equity, hedge funds.
Real assets are taking more and more space in our portfolios, given the current market environment. That would be real estate, mainly outside of Canada, infrastructure, commodities, gold.
Who are these people interested in such investments?
I would say 70 per cent of our clients are successful entrepreneurs and their families. A lot of them meet with us after a liquidity event. In some cases, it is their first one. That can mean selling the company, launching an IPO, transmitting the company.
There’s so much wealth being created in this country, there are many newly wealthy families, so a lot of ‘generation ones.’ But also a lot of transition. We are building meaningful relationships with the rising generations—two, three and beyond.
Why do these people gravitate to Grayhawk?
Quite often when they come to us they have a relationship with a broker, with their bank or with a manager that’s interesting. So they have built complexity in terms of structuring their wealth, and it’s hard for them to understand where they’re at. Our role is to precisely understand their needs, objectives, constraints and build the asset allocation that will best answer those needs, objectives and constraints.
Then we scour the world and find the best managers, and we are not biased or tempted to use one manager versus another. We only get paid through a discretionary fee on the assets that we manage, full stop. We do not accept commissions.
Are we in Canada behind what Europe has to offer in wealth management?
Wealth is slightly newer in Canada than in Europe, so we are a little behind in the wealth-management-for-the-very-wealthy space, but we’re catching up extremely quickly. There is a dynamic ecosystem of people who want to work in multidisciplinary teams and bring capabilities around the table, because it’s much more efficient to support a family that way, rather than everybody working in their corner.
What are some top issues that wealthy families face today?
It’s about performance—that’s very important in what we do. But the core of our conversations with our families is around their children. How are they going to handle being wealthy and living their own life? How to ensure that they evolve in the best possible way? That they don’t feel too spoiled or entitled? That they build their own success?
Are there special challenges for those who have exited a business?
One of the most tricky situations for a family, that can create imbalance, is a family business being sold. Because the business sits in the middle of a family, and there’s a natural harmony created through it, a natural link. When you take that away, that can leave a hole in the middle of the family, and it takes advisers such as Grayhawk to help the family fill it. Sometimes it’s another venture. Sometimes philanthropy comes in, not just as a foundation-like structure, as a means for communication and harmony in a family.
What are your predictions for alternative investments?
I’m seeing a very interesting evolution in which alts will probably represent more than 50 per cent of wealthy families’ portfolios. Those asset classes are more sophisticated, so the need for specialists such as Grayhawk grows.
Why are alternatives important to the families you’re dealing with?
The reality is, the more types of assets you bring into an asset allocation, the more diversification, the more resilience. Many of our clients have in mind the grandchildren of the grandchildren of their grandchildren. There’s a willingness to protect and nurture their legacy and to empower their children, to start with.
It’s not about succession, it’s always about continuity.
How has Grayhawk itself evolved?
It’s grown up pretty quickly, actually. I would say there was a Version 1.0, which was from the start until mid-2023, when it was really about building the right team, building our client base and building systems. And then Version 2.0, which started with our integration into Sagard, me taking over, and our new CIO, Stephen Harvey, joining.
How is the Sagard partnership progressing?
Paul Desmarais and Sagard decided to take an ownership in Grayhawk because they had identified the uniqueness of this model. So in 2020, they bought a stake in Grayhawk—alongside myself, alongside management and a couple of founding families—that they strengthened in 2021, leading up to 60 per cent. And at mid-2023 we decided that we would integrate more fulsomely.
What does that mean practically for your company?
It means we’re integrating all of the support functions: HR, IT, operations to a certain extent, compliance and legal. When you’re a team of 20, you have one or two people in those areas. In the Sagard ecosystem, we have a very strong team to support us and allow us to continue to focus on what we do: building meaningful relationships.
What’s ahead for Grayhawk? Any global expansion planned?
Our main growth objective for the next two, three years is surely 100 per cent Canada. We might evolve in terms of the number of offices, but for now we’re sticking to three.
We may consider deploying in a more international way, and I’m thinking France, I’m thinking the UK, I’m thinking the U.S. But it’s a longer-term strategy.
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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