In the nineteen-fifties, Getty was declared the richest living American. Getty, a granddaughter of the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. The lawyer was cagey about specifics, but eventually identified the prospect as Kendalle P. In the spring of 2013, a lawyer told her about a potential client who might benefit from Sonn’s expertise: a young woman in line to inherit part of an iconic American fortune. For clients who had investments in “offender industries,” such as fossil fuels or private prisons, she could help them sell the stock and plant trees in the Amazon, structuring the trades to minimize the cost in taxes. “We would work out tax-efficient strategies to move clients out of legacy positions and into a new portfolio that was more simpatico with their conscience,” she said. “Now it’s what we call ‘impact investing.’ ” What firms like hers offered was not charity it was capitalism with progressive characteristics. “It went from ‘socially responsible investing’ to ‘E.S.G.’ ”-environmental, social, and governance. Once she was certified, she signed up clients who wanted to “align their wealth with their values.” Her new role obligated her to master a shifting vocabulary of noblesse oblige. She started out at a small firm in lower Manhattan, working as a receptionist and studying at night to become a financial planner. “That was where the real levers of power were,” she said, adding, “My parents were so relieved.” Within a few years, she had left the nonprofit world for finance. She took to listening to analyst calls with C.E.O.s, buying stocks on E-Trade, and watching exultantly as some of her picks spiked in value.
But in 2005, while working at a nonprofit, she developed an unexpected fascination with her retirement account. After school, she moved to San Francisco, campaigned for a higher minimum wage, and planned on a career in activism. She was born in Queens, to parents from South Korea, who she says were determined to see her “fulfill the American Dream-go to Ivy League schools and become a doctor or a lawyer.” As a student at Barnard College, she was drawn to the punk and goth scenes and to progressive politics. “A level of respect for people is refreshing.” “Women and young people are talked down to,” she told me. Marlena Sonn entered the wealth-management industry in 2010, and found a niche working with what she called “progressive, ultra-high-net-worth millennials, women, inheritors, and family offices.” She sought to create a refuge from jargon and bro culture. The most devoted liken themselves to clergy or consiglieri, and tend to get prime seats at the kids’ weddings and the patriarch’s deathbed.
#Trust issues professional#
Managers handle delicate tasks one professional in the Cayman Islands described the sensitivity of making a financial plan for an out-of-wedlock child that “has to be kept totally private from the wife.” Others specialize in keeping clients out of the news by minimizing public transactions. Guarding the capital-the “corpus,” as it’s known in the business-puts you in contact with a family’s most closely held secrets. For the very rich, private wealth managers are in a separate class from other retainers, even from the trusted pilots, chefs, and attendants who maintain their life styles.
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