Focus Financial starts global wealth advisory firm with billionaire Hinduja family

The Hinduja family is partnering with New York-based Focus Financial Partners to launch a multifamily office that will serve other members of the world’s ultra-rich.

Beryllus Capital is a venture between the Hinduja’s vast conglomerate and Focus Financial and will provide investment management, banking and real estate advisory, according to a statement Monday. It will have offices in London, Geneva and Singapore and be led by co-founder Amit Kotha, a former managing director in London at Royal Bank of Canada.

“This is an important strategic alliance,” Gopichand Hinduja, co-chairman of Mumbai-based Hinduja Group, said in the statement. “Beryllus Capital will address the bespoke needs of ultra-high-net-worth families on a global scale.”

In addition to Gopichand, three brothers — Srichand, Prakash and Ashok — lead Hinduja Group and are based across the U.K., continental Europe and India.

Their father founded the business three decades before the partition of British India in 1947 and thrived by importing carpets, dried fruits and saffron from Iran and exporting goods the other way. The conglomerate now has investments in finance, media and health care in almost 40 countries and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index values the wealth of the clan at about $18 billion.

“Our strength lies in the long-standing connections that our founding partners have with some of the most influential families in the world,” Kotha said.

There are more than 10,000 family offices globally, according to accounting firm EY, including those of Alphabet's Eric Schmidt and inventor James Dyson. The vast majority oversee less than $1 billion, often making it more attractive to take a multifamily approach, where they can more easily pool ideas and capital for investments and share costs.

Focus Financial was founded by Rudy Adolf and teams with independent wealth advisers, primarily in the U.S. It went public in 2018 and has more than 70 partners and exceeds $250 billion in client assets.

“Beryllus leads our expansion into Europe and Asia, and is another outstanding example of how we are expanding our presence in the ultra-high net worth segment,” Rajini Kodialam, co-founder and chief operating officer of Focus, said in the statement.

Hinduja Group’s assets are owned by family members under an unusual structure guided by the principal that assets held by one belong to all and that each man will appoint the others as their executors. That stance became the focus of a legal battle last year in the U.K., where Srichand lives, with the patriarch and his daughter, Vinoo, seeking to carve out some of the family’s assets.