Ares Management formed Ares Wealth Management Solutions (WMS), which will oversee the product development, distribution, marketing and client management activities across Ares’ investment offerings in the global wealth management channel.
In connection with the launch of WMS, Ares named Raj Dhanda global head of wealth management and leader of WMS. Prior to joining Ares in 2021, he was the CEO at Black Creek Group, which he joined in 2016. Previously, Dhanda spent 26 years at Morgan Stanley, where he held a variety of leadership roles, including leading divisions of the firm’s institutional and wealth management platforms, serving as head of investment products and services for its wealth management division and serving on the executive and operating committees for its wealth management division. In addition to Dhanda, Ares named Christina Adamson, Moshe Bajnon, Casey Galligan and Jeff Taylor to senior leadership positions at WMS.
“Ares has been at the forefront of supporting the ‘democratization of alternatives’ and we have made significant investments across our platform through the years to onboard a range of investor types and sizes,” Michael Arougheti, CEO of Ares, said. “We have made meaningful progress and are welcoming a rapidly growing number of individual investors into our strategies, but we are only scratching the surface of the opportunity. By establishing Ares Wealth Management Solutions under Raj, who is highly respected in the industry and a proven business builder, we believe we can create a differentiated offering for our retail clients while supporting substantial business growth for each of our investment groups.”
“Like our institutional clients, individual investors are highly focused on increasing their exposure to alternative investment strategies,” Ryan Berry, partner and chief marketing and strategy officer of Ares, said. “While there might be a shared objective, individuals have historically been more limited in how they could use alternatives to diversify and enhance their portfolios. Ares Wealth Management Solutions will seek to address these challenges by providing greater access to our credit, private equity, real estate and secondaries strategies and delivering outstanding client service.”
“The retail demand for alternative investments is significant and experiencing accelerated growth,” Dhanda said. “This move enhances the strong foothold that Ares already has built in the retail and high net worth channel, which today represents more than $45 billion of assets under management, and puts us in a better position to use Ares’ extensive relationships to further expand our distribution partnerships. Ares Wealth Management Solutions has a large and talented team. We are very excited by the opportunity to deliver institutional-quality solutions to individual investors around the globe and complement our existing publicly listed products.”
