Bartlett & Co Wealth Management

Bartlett & Co Wealth Management

Bartlett & Co Wealth Management opened its doors in 1898, making it one of the oldest independent advisory firms in the United States. The firm operates as a fee-only, fiduciary multi-family office serving high-net-worth individuals, families, and business owners from its Cincinnati headquarters. In 2018, Bartlett joined the Focus Financial Partners partnership, giving it a permanent capital base while maintaining operational autonomy under the leadership of President Holly Mazzocca and CEO Kelley Downing. The underlying wealth it manages is private and geographically concentrated in the Midwest. Bartlett builds bespoke investment programs that combine traditional equity and fixed-income portfolios with exposure to alternative asset classes including private equity, private credit, real estate, and hedge funds. The firm deploys capital primarily through fund commitments and direct co-investments across North America, though specific portfolio company names and fund-level allocations are not publicly disclosed. A dedicated in-house research team, including a Director of External Manager Research and Director of Trading, selects and monitors third-party managers, while Bartlett's own portfolio managers oversee client-level asset allocation and implementation. The firm is indirectly majority-owned by funds affiliated with Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which acquired Focus Financial Partners in August 2023. Stone Point Capital and KKR hold minority stakes through their Focus investments. Bartlett operates through a management entity, BDB 1898, LLC, and its investment advisory representatives include several multi-decade veterans such as Kenneth Lawrence Schlachter, who has been with the firm's predecessors since before 2018. The professional team is spread across offices in Cincinnati, Chicago, and Louisville. Unlike most multi-family offices that centralize investment decision-making in a single CIO, Bartlett distributes authority across a group of named principals who directly manage key functions — equity research, fixed income, trading, and wealth advisory — while serving a compact base of families in three Midwestern cities. This principal-led structure, combined with its Focus partnership model that separates ownership from management, allows the 125-year-old firm to offer the continuity of a boutique with the infrastructure of a larger platform.