Marchand Faries Financial Management

The founding principals, J. Michael Marchand and Cheryl W. Faries, remain actively involved in portfolio management. Marchand serves as president, while Faries holds the CFO and chief compliance officer roles. Both have been with the firm since its founding in 1996, and their dual oversight means there is no external investment committee or outsourced CIO arrangement steering allocations—decisions rest with the two named principals.

Marchand Faries does not run a formal proprietary sourcing engine. Private placements, particularly in real estate and private credit, originate through longstanding relationships with developers, operators, and regional banks across Florida and Georgia. This is a relationship-based model built on decades in the same geography, not a systematic deal-by-deal auction process. The firm's small client base means individual investments are often sourced for a single family or a tight group, rather than placed through a fund structure.

The firm is organized as a registered investment advisor, not a single-family office. It advises multiple high-net-worth individuals and families, placing it in the multi-family advisory category by function. However, its deliberately small client base and high-touch service model produce an experience closer to a traditional family office than to a mass-affluent financial planning practice.

Marchand Faries constructs customized separately managed accounts rather than committing client capital to third-party private funds as a primary strategy. Public equity and fixed-income exposure comes through individual securities or ETFs managed in-house. When alternative assets are included, the firm favors direct placements or small-partner real estate structures over blind-pool fund commitments—a posture consistent with the desire to retain full visibility and control over illiquid exposures.

The firm has not disclosed any formal co-investment program. Given its small size and relationship-driven approach, any co-investment activity would likely be ad hoc, structured directly with a developer or sponsor the principals have known for years rather than through an institutional co-investment vehicle. External allocators evaluating the firm should assume that co-investment capability is opportunistic, not programmatic.

As an RIA, Marchand Faries operates under a fee-based model—typically a percentage of assets under management—rather than commission-driven brokerage. The fiduciary standard attached to its registration requires that it place client interests ahead of its own, a structural difference from broker-dealer models that once dominated the region. The firm's public filings confirm its fee-only posture (per SEC records, 2025).

No public succession plan has been disclosed. Both named principals have been with the firm since 1996, and no next-generation portfolio managers or junior partners are identified in regulatory filings or public records (per SEC filings, 2025). For an institutional allocator considering a long-term mandate, this is a material governance question: the firm's continuity is tightly coupled to two individuals, and the absence of a disclosed transition structure introduces key-person risk.