Fortigent™

Fortigent Welcomes Evercore Wealth Management

June 15, 2009

A Growing Advisory Firm Leverages Fortigent for Its Expertise in Research & Reporting

Rockville, MD, June 15, 2009 — Fortigent LLC, a leading provider of outsourced wealth management solutions for financial advisors and institutions targeting ultra high net worth clients, today announced it has been retained by Evercore Wealth Management, a growing advisory firm offering independent and objective advice and services to high net worth clients with investable assets of $5 million or higher. Evercore Partners, a leading investment banking boutique and investment management firm, launched Evercore Wealth Management as well as a newly-chartered national trust bank, Evercore Trust Company, within the past year. Fortigent was selected to provide both unified wealth reporting and to perform due diligence on outside managers in all investment categories to complement Evercore’s existing in-house investment strategy.

“We were impressed by the overall strength of Fortigent’s solution, in particular their experience and expertise in performing third party due diligence, the sourcing of investment managers for both traditional and alternative strategies, and their ability to use their collective size to negotiate access, fees and minimums. We also see high added value in their comprehensive data aggregation and consolidated performance reporting capabilities,” says Christopher Zander, Partner and Wealth Advisor of Evercore Wealth Management. “Fortigent is well known in the industry for delivering an institutional quality open architecture investment platform, and it was important that they were able to demonstrate an understanding of how to integrate this platform into our trust solution. Our main focus is to provide highly personalized wealth management services to very high end investors, and one of our primary value propositions is a client/firm mutual alignment of interests. Our relationship with Fortigent will help give us scalability, flexibility, and “speed to market”, and the combination of our respective investment capabilities will significantly enhance the end client wealth management experience.”

“We are delighted to have Evercore Wealth Management join the Fortigent community,” says Scott Welch, Senior Managing Director of Investment Research & Strategy of Fortigent. “Enhanced due diligence and the ability to aggregate and report on all client assets are big differentiators in the marketplace today – more so than ever. Client advocacy, collaboration, and alignment of interests are crucial in achieving ‘trusted advisor’ status. By partnering with Fortigent, Evercore can focus on these issues via a boutique-style service model, and can leverage our investment expertise to offer an institutional quality solution. We think this is a win for Evercore, a win for Fortigent and, most importantly, a win for Evercore’s clients.”

John C. Yackel, Managing Director of Sales at Fortigent, adds, “We believe our relationship with Evercore will prove to be an exceptional partnership. The combination of Fortigent, Evercore Partners, Evercore Wealth Management, and Evercore Trust Company will provide high net worth investors with a comprehensive and objective wealth management solution that meets their often-complex needs. Evercore has the experience and expertise to work with the most sophisticated clientele, while still maintaining a client-centric service model. This is a powerful combination.”

About Fortigent. Fortigent, LLC delivers a fully integrated and customizable business-to-business outsourced wealth management solution to banks, trust companies, and independent advisory firms. Services include an “open architecture” investment platform with particular expertise in alternative investments, a flexible unified managed account program, and consolidated wealth reporting. Fortigent’s web-based portal interface allows access to proposal and rebalancing tools, client portfolio reporting and accounting, as well as industry articles, research papers, and other practice management and business development resources. For more information, visit www.fortigent.com.

About Evercore Wealth Management. Evercore Wealth Management (“EWM”) offers its clients investment policy creation, asset allocation, customized investment management, manager selection, performance reporting and wealth/financial planning services. EWM’s core investment management services consist of cash, fixed income and an all-cap core equity offering. Additionally, EWM provides its clients access to investment offerings managed by other providers. EWM also offers personal trust services to its clients through Evercore Trust Company, N.A., a chartered national trust bank with $12.8 billion in assets under management and administration.

More information about EWM and its wealth management advisors can be found at www.evercorewealthmanagement.com.

About Evercore Partners. Evercore Partners is a leading investment banking boutique and investment management firm. Evercore's Advisory business counsels its clients on mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, restructurings and other strategic transactions. Evercore's Investment Management business comprises wealth management, institutional asset management and private equity investing. Evercore serves a diverse set of clients around the world from its offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, London, Mexico City and Monterrey, Mexico. More information about Evercore can be found on the Company's Web site at www.evercore.com. < previous page