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 Profile: Steve Weinstein, MBA '78, JD '78
Northwestern JD-MBA Graduation Year: 1978
Undergraduate School: Stanford University
Employment: Altair Advisers LLC
Title: President
Family: Steve and his wife have been married for 27+ years and have a son, 18, and daughter, 12.
Interview:
On March 30, 2005 we had an opportunity to interview Steve Weinstein, a joint program alumnus who serves on the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board. The following answers were paraphrased from the information Steve provided during the interview.
(AN = Alumni Newsletter, SW = Steve Weinstein)
AN: Before we hear about your experience at Northwestern, tell us a little about Altair Advisers and what your company does?
SW: Altair is an independent investment counseling firm that serves as a client’s manager of money managers. By this, I mean we do not manage money in house. We offer strategic asset allocation advice for our clients, and we conduct extensive due diligence and research on outside money management firms including both traditional and alternative asset classes. We match our clients’ preferences to investment vehicles that we feel offer the promise of wealth accumulation and preservation.
AN: How did Altair come about?
SW: I spent 19 years at Arthur Andersen, starting in 1983, and I was one of the last people to turn out the lights in June of 2002 when Andersen closed its doors. After Northwestern I spent 2 years practicing law and 3 years at Continental Bank in their Financial Advisory Service for Executives. I joined Andersen after I had briefly been at a boutique financial planning firm started by some ex-Continental bankers. My role at Andersen was to help build a financial consulting practice for wealthy individuals. In the early 90’s, I began to specialize in the investment advisory services business, which grew from nothing to 75 clients representing $500 million in assets by the end of 2001. When Andersen faced its difficulties due to Enron, my group of 12 people had several offers to join some outstanding financial services firms, but we elected to start our own independent firm, giving rise to Altair. Almost 3 years later, we continue to serve the vast majority of our original clients who followed us from Andersen as well as 60 new relationships, and now advise on over $1.7 billion of assets.
AN: How different is running your own company from having the surrounding infrastructure that Arthur Andersen offered?
SW: It is definitely a challenge, but it’s an exciting challenge. I can think of two differences where having Arthur Andersen behind you helped. First, Andersen centralized our research function which lessened our involvement in that capacity. Yet, at Altair, we recreated our own research group which has been an amazingly successful venture for us, and in fact has allowed us to enjoy broader and deeper research, greater flexibility, and faster responsiveness for our clients. Second, new clients were fairly easy to obtain through Andersen’s in-house referral mechanism. But the in-house referral advantage also had some drawbacks. Because it was easy to obtain new clients from Andersen’s existing client base, we ignored some of our natural referral sources such as accountants and estate planners. At Altair, we have been able to establish strong relationships with exceptionally high quality accountants and lawyers over the past three years, who have shown their confidence in us by referring some of their clients to Altair.
AN: How has your joint degree helped in the investment advisory field?
SW: I incorporate both my legal and business training every day. I really was unsure of what I would do with my career when I was in graduate school. I had always assumed I would be a lawyer because that is what my father did. But my business school experience was equally fantastic. I experimented with corporate law for a couple years but realized that I was more passionate about wealth management. The bottom line is that I have had a tremendous return on my investment from Northwestern’s JD-MBA program, and place a very high value on having graduated with both degrees.
AN: Have you been able to stay involved with both schools?
SW: One fact I’m particularly proud of is an annual tradition that I have maintained with two of my fellow classmates that graduated from the joint program at the same time I did. We have always had lunch three times a year, in honor of our birthdays. I have a wonderful network of friends, more so from Northwestern Law, with whom I keep in close contact. Although Altair does not provide estate planning services, we are constantly in contact with lawyers who provide those services to our clients, and the Northwestern Law network has been extremely valuable in this regard. Finally, I am a member of the Kellogg Alumni Advisory Board which keeps me apprised of happenings in the Northwestern Business Community.
AN: Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
SW: Your welcome, I look forward to hearing about news from the joint degree program.
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