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KAWG&F Financial Planning Group
Lawrence Kayne's Baltimore multi-family office, built from an accounting practice in 1986, allocates across private credit and direct real estate.
KAWG&F Financial Planning Group
KAWG&F Financial Planning Group formed in 1986 when Lawrence K. Kayne and his co-founders built a tax and estate planning practice in Baltimore. Over four decades, the firm deepened its relationships with a core group of wealthy families — many from professional-services exits — and evolved into a multi-family office. The shop's identity remains anchored in CPA-led wealth structuring rather than pure asset gathering, a posture that shapes how it invests. The firm allocates primarily across private credit, direct real estate, and tax-advantaged vehicles. Its credit sleeve favors short-duration, collateralized lending to middle-market sponsors, while the property book concentrates on Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern US multifamily and industrial assets. KAWG&F also structures life-insurance and estate-planning products that function as alternative yield instruments for taxable clients. The firm does not market its track record publicly; commitments are sourced through professional networks and referrals rather than institutional RFP processes. Team size remains deliberately small — consistent with a multi-family office that operates more as a private investment partnership than an institutional platform. No adjacent vehicles or branded philanthropic foundations are publicly associated with the firm. The leadership group includes Brenda K. Wiederhold, a principal who advises on cross-border estate and trust structures. The office maintains a single location in Baltimore, serving a concentrated client base with overlapping professional histories. KAWG&F's structural differentiator is its origin inside an operating accounting firm. Most multi-family offices are born from wealth-management practices or single-family liquidity events; KAWG&F instead grew from billable-hour tax advisory into allocator responsibilities organically — a path that creates unusually tight alignment on after-tax returns but limits scalability. This architecture means the firm functions as an external family-CFO layer rather than a product distributor.
General information
Firm type
Multi Family Office
Year founded
1986
AUM
Undisclosed
Location
Region
North America
Country
United States
City
Baltimore
Corporate office
Baltimore, MD, United States
Principals
Lawrence K. Kayne
Founding Principal
Brenda K. Wiederhold
Principal
Sector focus
Frequently asked questions
Who runs investment decisions at KAWG&F?
The investment committee is led by founding principal Lawrence K. Kayne, with Brenda K. Wiederhold and senior tax advisors contributing to allocation design. Because the firm evolved from a CPA practice, investment decisions are filtered through an after-tax lens that involves multiple in-house disciplines, not just a standalone investment team.
How does KAWG&F source proprietary deal flow?
The firm sources primarily through professional networks built across four decades in Baltimore and the mid-Atlantic. Relationships with regional banks, law firms, and middle-market private-credit sponsors generate deal flow. It does not use competitive auction processes or external placement agents, consistent with its CPA-rooted, referral-based culture.
Is KAWG&F structured as a single family office or does it operate more like a multi-family office?
KAWG&F operates as a multi-family office serving a concentrated group of families — many with overlapping professional-services backgrounds. It is not a single-family office tied to one source of wealth, nor does it operate as a commercial wealth-management platform with a broad retail client base.
Does KAWG&F participate in fund commitments or only direct deals?
The firm executes both direct deals — particularly in private credit and real estate — and selective commitments to external funds, primarily in areas that complement its tax-planning expertise. Direct co-investments often arise from the same networks that feed its credit pipeline.
Which sectors does KAWG&F explicitly avoid?
The firm has no publicly stated exclusion list, but its portfolio consistently avoids early-stage venture capital, speculative technology, and strategies with near-term tax inefficiency. Its structure and CPA heritage steer allocations toward cash-flowing, tax-advantaged asset classes.
Where does the underlying wealth come from?
Client wealth largely originates from exits of professional-services firms, including accounting, legal, and consulting practices, as well as multi-generational family capital concentrated in the mid-Atlantic region. The firm does not disclose individual family names or liquidity events, in keeping with its private, non-institutional posture.
Does KAWG&F maintain philanthropic structures, and how are they managed?
No separate philanthropic foundation is publicly branded under the KAWG&F name. Tax-advantaged charitable planning — including donor-advised funds and private foundation formation — is delivered as an integrated part of its core estate and wealth-structuring practice rather than through a standalone foundation.
Profile maintained by Altss using OSINT (open-source intelligence), regulatory filings, licensed data partners, and verified direct submissions. Read the methodology. Last updated: . Continuous refresh with full update cycles at least every 30 days.
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