Grand Rapids, MI Office

Hightower provides investment advisory and planning services to a broad mix of individual and institutional clients, including pension and profit-sharing plans, charitable organizations, corporations, trusts, registered and private pooled investment vehicles, insurance companies and other financial institutions. These services are delivered through its network of Advisor Practices and include discretionary and non-discretionary portfolio management, financial planning, retirement plan consulting and access to pooled vehicles and private funds as described in the Form ADV.

The firm’s advisory model emphasizes manager selection and multi-manager solutions: Advisors may use Affiliated Managers (including Hightower’s Investment Solutions and the Hightower One program) and Third Party Managers, and Hightower discloses the use of proprietary research (including NEPC) and portfolio construction that can include mutual funds, ETFs, alternative investments and custom/direct indexing. The ADV also details operational features of the programs (monitoring, rebalancing and home-office trading for Hightower One) and discusses investment considerations for international and non‑U.S. exposure, tax-managed strategies and use of margin when appropriate.

Compared with many peers, the brochure highlights several less-common attributes: Hightower’s affiliated broker‑dealer, Hightower Securities, receives placement, distribution and other transaction-related compensation for certain products (including alternative investments and insurance), and the firm discloses commission-related activities and revenue-sharing arrangements. The ADV further shows experience with large pooled and institutional mandates (including sub-advisory and co-advisory roles for private funds) and describes managing cross-border exposures and related country/currency risks, which aligns with the firm’s disclosure of a notable non‑U.S. client presence and relationships with large institutional investors.