Family-Office Bankers Climb the Ranks at J.P. Morgan and HSBC

Private bankers who work closely with the wealthiest clients and their family offices were awarded high-ranking positions at two of the largest banks this week.

J.P. Morgan named Nelle Miller and William Sinclair co-CEOs of the U.S. private bank, news it shared in a memo to employees on Thursday. 

Miller will continue to lead the private bank’s New York market, the largest in the U.S., where the bank does most of its business. The U.S. private bank oversees more than $2.4 trillion in client assets, out of the global private bank’s $3.8 trillion. Miller has held other leadership positions in the past. She was a founding member of the bank’s global investment opportunities team—a trading desk to serve ultra-rich and sophisticated clients, as well as hedge funds—and previously led the outsourced chief investment office. She also led Morgan Private Advisory, a cross-disciplinary team of lawyers and other professionals.

Sinclair, who has worked at J.P. Morgan since 2007, will continue to lead the private bank’s financial leaders group dedicated to venture capitalists, private-equity professionals, and hedge-fund managers, and remain the global co-head of the family office practice, which advises clients on their investing, borrowing, liquidity, and estate and philanthropic planning.

Natacha Minniti is the other global co-head of the family office practice. She is also the international head of 23 Wall, the global team that serves the exceedingly wealthy (even among family offices).

The co-CEO structure “reflects the scale and complexity” of the private bank in the U.S. and what clients demand, the company said.

"I have spent my career alongside clients through market cycles and the most meaningful moments in their families' lives, and Will [Sinclair] and I are fortunate to lead a team that knows our clients just as deeply. The decisions families face today are more interconnected than ever, spanning private markets, liquidity and multigenerational planning. This is an extraordinary opportunity to build on everything that makes this business special,” Miller said in a statement.

J.P. Morgan’s U.S. private bank has more than 5,500 employees across 57 offices. The bank declined to share how many single-family offices it works with. Its annual family-office report published early this year was based on a survey of 333, but there are surely clients that don’t participate. Individual investment bankers and other professionals often have personal contact lists that are several hundred offices long, but most have real working relationships with only a couple hundred offices or fewer, depending on where they work and what they do.

One of Europe’s largest banks announced new leaders.

Hannes Hofmann, the former global head of Citi’s family-office group, has ended a nine-month sabbatical and is now the global head of family offices at HSBC Private Bank, a newly created position at the company. He’ll be based in London and will work closely with HSBC’s corporate and institutional teams to bring what they offer to the wealthiest private clients.

Prior to Citi, Hofmann worked at J.P. Morgan’s private bank for 20 years in New York, Hong Kong and London.

HSBC also announced that Cayman Wills, another former Citi employee, was named head of its U.S. private bank. Before her stint at Citi, Wills worked at J.P. Morgan for 18 years and held various leadership roles.

“These appointments will strengthen how we support and expand our relationships with some of the world's wealthiest families, as we better serve the growing number of family office and ultra-high-net-worth clients across our key markets.” Ida Liu, CEO of HSBC Private Bank, said in a statement about the appointments.

iPaladin v. Orca Trial is Postponed

The software companies iPaladin and Orca have mutually agreed to postpone their trial until 2028. It was originally scheduled for November.

In 2024, iPaladin, a software used by more than 160 family offices to manage documents, data, and operations, filed a patent lawsuit against its Swiss competitor Orca, alleging that the competitor copied iPaladin’s system. 

Orca has denied those claims and, throughout this year, argued that iPaladin’s patents are overly broad and made it unfairly difficult for it to defend itself in a trial. It asked the court to adopt specific words and phrases in the patents, but a judge determined this summer that was not necessary. Meanwhile, iPaladin also received notice that its fourth patent would be allowed.

Now that a trial can proceed with iPaladin’s claims as written, the two parties agreed to move the upcoming trial date, and the court approved the request.

“Both sides need time to complete discovery and expert work in light of that ruling. We are prepared to try the case. We have said from the start that we would resolve this on terms that respect our patents, and we still would," an attorney representing iPaladin in the case said.

“The company maintains that the asserted patents are invalid and that Orca does not infringe them, and Orca looks forward to presenting its case to the court. The revised schedule was jointly requested by both parties following the Court’s recent claim construction ruling. Any suggestion that the dates were chosen to delay trial is incorrect. Instead, the new schedule follows the issuance of the Court’s ruling and to accommodate the court’s and parties’ schedules,” Victor Johnson, a partner at Dentons, the law firm representing Orca, said.

Neither party commented further on the ongoing litigation.

The lawsuit's eventual resolution could reverberate through the small but expanding universe of family-office software. Modus previously reported that iPaladin has sent notice letters to 12 additional companies that may have copied its system. A settlement, victory or loss in the case could set a precedent for future cases related to iPaladin’s patents.

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