Haussmann Financial

Haussmann Financial

Founded in 1990 in Lake Forest, Illinois, Haussmann Financial serves as a private wealth manager catering to high-net-worth families, corporate executives, and business owners concentrated along Chicago's North Shore corridor. The firm's formation coincided with a wave of independent advisory launches that unbundled trust services from the large money-center banks, offering families an integrated office handling investment management, tax-aware portfolio construction, estate coordination, and family-office bookkeeping under one roof. Haussmann advises on cross-asset-class portfolios spanning public equities, municipal and corporate fixed income, private real estate partnerships, and private equity fund commitments. The firm uses separately managed accounts for direct public-market exposures and vets external alternative managers for co-investment and limited-partner positions. Its Lake Forest location places it inside one of the country's densest concentrations of private wealth, where referral networks among estate attorneys, corporate trustees, and business-exit advisors drive client acquisition. The firm structures portfolios around after-tax return targets, often layering individual municipal-bond ladders beneath equity sleeves to manage Illinois and federal tax drag — a persistent concern for resident families. Haussmann operates as a boutique with a lean advisory team, likely under 15 professionals, focused on a deliberately concentrated book of client relationships rather than national scale. The firm does not market a proprietary fund family; instead it selects third-party managers and structures customized credit lines and liquidity facilities through its custodial and banking relationships. Its business model resembles the multi-family office archetype — combining discretionary investment management with bill-pay, consolidated performance reporting, and philanthropic-entity administration for a few dozen families — but it has historically branded as a financial-advisory practice rather than a formal family office. No recent operational milestones have been publicly reported. Haussmann's structural differentiator lies in its independence and its embeddedness in the Chicago trust-and-estate ecosystem. It is not a roll-up platform backed by private equity. That independence gives it freedom to recommend external managers without product-placement pressure and to structure bespoke credit facilities for clients with illiquid operating-company or real estate wealth. For families seeking a single relationship covering liquid portfolio management, private-market access, and wealth-transfer planning — without the institutional overhead of a large bank trust department — Haussmann occupies a narrow but durable niche.