Adagio Trust ready to stepout from its home in Reno

Adagio Trust Co., a Reno company that serves exceptionally wealthy families, is preparing for one of the biggest moves in its five-year history a satellite office in Las Vegas.

It's a cautious first step toward the possible establishment of a handful of offices across the nation Atlanta, Denver, maybe New York City says David Holmes, Adagio's president and chief investment officer.

Adagio provides two distinct sets of services for its clients.

On one hand, it has about $265 million under management for its clients.

That's a highly competitive sector where numbers are everything, and Adagio's focus on large-cap stocks has posted annualized returns of 7 percent since its founding in late 2001, compared with 3.9 percent for the S&P 500.

At the same time, Holmes says, Adagio runs a "family office" that handles everything from complex trust administration to routine payment of daily bills for its clients.

Unlike many family offices, which often get their start serving the needs of a single wealthy family and then widen their scope to include others, Adagio was envisioned from the start as a multi-family family office.

But it's taken some time to get there.

Launched by Holmes, a former vice president and portfolio manager with The Whittier Trust in Reno, and longtime Reno-area banker Bob Barone five years ago, Adagio began serving as the family office for an Atlanta family that Holmes describes as "very, very wealthy."

Last year, as Barone began planning his departure from Adagio, Holmes got to work on a recapitalization of the company.

Today, nine wealthy families share ownership of Adagio. The anchor family from Atlanta owns 35 percent, the other families own 46 percent and the company's managers own the remaining 19 percent. All but two of the families that own the company also are clients.

George Aker, the former president of Nevada National Bank, is chairman of Adagio's board.

The recapitalization completed, and the company quartered in new offices at 730 Sandhill Road after spending its first years at another location in South Meadows, Holmes now looks to push growth of Adagio's customer base.

The new Las Vegas office led by Scot McCormick, a vice president and portfolio manager for the company, is likely to be a two-person office for quite a while perhaps to the point that it oversees $1 billion in wealth.

"If you get the right people, a small group can manage a large amount of wealth," says Holmes.

(The company's headquarters staff numbers seven.)

The reason for the Las Vegas office: Wealthy families appreciate the confidentiality of business entities created anywhere in Nevada, but they have an equal appreciation for the good life ultra-luxury suites and the like they can get in Las Vegas. Given the choice, some prefer to do business in southern Nevada.

Other potential office locations in Georgia, Colorado and New York City likely will be driven by the desires of

clients who want to have convenient access to Adagio executives, Holmes says.

As Adagio looks to widen its list of clients, a key selling point is its status as a trust company.

That, Holmes says, allows the families that use Adagio's service to manage their wealth over several generations and allows them to use Adagio to administer family foundations.

Jane Adorno and Kathy Allinger, Adagio vice presidents and client administrators, each have two decades of trust-administration experience.

Holmes says addition of new offices in additional cities is likely to occur at a measured tempo more adagio than presto, if you will as the company puts the same long view to its own affairs that it puts to

the business of its clients.