Lipman Burgon & Partners

Lipman Burgon & Partners

Lipman Burgon & Partners was formed in 2011 when Robert Lipman and Paul Burgon led a management buyout of the wealth management division of Investec Bank Australia. Both founders had established Investec's Australian wealth practice in the 1990s, and Lipman had previously founded the wealth businesses at Towers Perrin and Ord Minnett. The firm renamed to Lipman Burgon & Partners in 2015 and operates as a true multi-family office — deliberately small, with no growth-targeting conflicts and a partnership model where advisers carry direct accountability for a limited number of client relationships. Paul Selikman, a partner who spent six years in the Lowy Family Group investment office, anchors the firm's family-office DNA alongside a senior team drawn from Goldman Sachs, Macquarie Group, and Deutsche Bank. The firm allocates across public equities, fixed income, private equity, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, hedge funds, and commodities. Its private-markets activity spans direct co-investments, fund-of-funds commitments, and SPV structures. On the real-asset side, the firm holds an unlisted Australian property portfolio, a private real-estate debt strategy, and global unlisted infrastructure exposures. It also maintains a physical gold allocation and a bitcoin position, and runs a private-debt enhanced-yield solution for Australian clients. The investment team, led by CIO Paul Burgon, uses external manager relationships to source institutional-grade access — the firm’s website cites its ability to “participate meaningfully in bespoke opportunities that sit outside the typical scope of larger firms.” Geographic coverage centres on Australia and Asia, with additional global exposures through fund commitments. Lipman Burgon operates from a single Sydney office. Its partnership group includes six named partners — Burgon, Lipman, Selikman, Heath Ueckermann, Jason Rademan, and COO Nandita Alva — plus a seven-member advisory and analyst bench. The firm does not disclose total AUM or client count, consistent with its posture as a boutique serving a deliberately limited group. Paul Burgon has appeared on Barron’s Top 25 Financial Advisers in Australia for eight consecutive years, ranking 4th nationally and 1st in NSW in 2025. In 2025, adviser Deborah Harbrow won the Women in Banking and Finance Award for Achievement in Private Wealth and Superannuation (per the firm, 2025). Joanna Sun leads a dedicated family-office design practice focused on multi-generational succession and governance, and Jeannie Feng runs an Asia Desk for Mandarin-speaking HNW families investing into Australia. What distinguishes Lipman Burgon is its formalised separation from any parent bank or platform. The 2011 MBO removed the conflicts that large wealth managers carry, and the partnership structure — not a corporate subsidiary — means the investment committee and advisory team can deploy across asset classes without product-approval pressure. The firm’s willingness to hold physical gold, bitcoin, and direct private-debt instruments alongside traditional multi-asset portfolios reflects this structural independence. It also embeds tax structuring, intergenerational planning, and family governance under one roof, avoiding the multi-adviser fragmentation that typifies Australian private wealth.