Helena Jonassen bids farewell to US Trust after 18 years to rejoin breakaway colleagues at Evercore

When Helena Jonassen finally walked through the doors of Evercore Wealth Management LLC’s midtown Manhattan office after close on to two decades at U.S. Trust, you might have expected her appearance to resemble that of a person emerging from a trust company owned by a bank that owns a wirehouse.

But thanks to U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management’s bureaucracy, the 53-year-old financial advisor arrives at Evercore from the New York-based BoA subsidiary at the peak of health and vibrancy.

“I’ve never seen such a relaxed look when somebody joined us,” says Jeff Maurer, chief executive of the Evercore RIA, which advises $5.2 billion of assets.

What led to this glow of health is the garden leave U.S. Trust enforces on its departing employees. In this case Jonassen, who reported for her first day of work last Tuesday, found herself sitting out 60 days with full salary and benefits paid by U.S. Trust. See: Braving 'garden leave’ vagaries, Glenmede ramps up New York office by luring managing director from U.S. Trust. The benefit to the bank is the head start it gets in convincing clients who might have loved Jonassen not to move their assets to her new RIA. And such a cooling off period may stem other would-be defectors.

Enormous leap

Jonassen herself did not jump to Evercore without some torment.

“I worked with many of my clients for 18 years as their trusted advisor; it was an enormously difficult decision for me to leave U. S. Trust,” she says.

But the promise of what she could do for clients beyond the institutional atmosphere of her longtime employer encouraged her to make the leap.

Jeff Maurer: I’ve never seen such
a relaxed look when somebody joined
us.

“Knowing that I was joining a company whose core value focuses on service to our clients and creating individual customized solutions for them convinced me that I was making the right decision,” Jonassen says.

Team work

Jonassen most recently served as a senior trust and fiduciary officer at U.S. Trust. She is the 70th hire at Evercore Wealth Management, which was founded in 1995 and manages $5.2 billion of assets.

She will form the wealth manager half of a two-person investing team. Evercore tends to pair up wealth managers and portfolio managers. The portfolio manager tends to be the primary client contact although both positions are considered client-facing. Evercore is seeking a portfolio manager to complete Jonassen’s team. See: Evercore makes a wealth management hire from Goldman Sachs who’s fluent in investment banking.

Jonassen will report to Chris Zander, chief wealth advisory officer at Evercore Wealth Management.

One more poach

Maurer’s hire marks a return to his favorite fishing ground — U.S. Trust. Maurer started there in 1970, rose to become chief executive and then, in 2003, broke away — taking 14 U.S. Trust advisors with him. See: Evercore is looking to its future after lifting out a huge team of U.S. Trust financial advisors.

Jewelle Bickford [pictured] and Martha Pomerantz
are two high-powered female execs Jeff
Maurer has brought to Evercore.

Maurer allows that he didn’t know Jonassen well himself when they were both at U.S. Trust but his partners were familiar with her work and character and vouched for her. See: An $18-billion RIA tacks on a $24-billion U.S. Trust cast-off as the grab for UHNW magnets continues.

“Helena was somebody we had thought about,” Maurer says.

The hire also continues a Maurer pattern of hiring heavily from the pool of women advisors. He recently brought aboard Jewelle Bickford from GenSpring Family Offices and Martha Pomerantz from Wells Fargo. See: A $4.7-billion RIA-under-investment-bank in NYC softens its macho edge by headhunting a top woman from GenSpring.

Three-decade track record

Jonassen, a graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, has 30 years of experience in wealth management. Prior to joining U.S. Trust she worked as financial planner and portfolio manager for Train, Smith Counsel LLC in New York.

Evercore Wealth Management offers personal trust services to its clients through Evercore Trust Company N.A., a national trust bank with $42.3 billion in assets under administration as of March 31.