Alliance combines Haven Tower’s advisory and wealth platform PR and marketing offering with Cardinal’s PE-focused communications experience
By DWN Staff
Private equity firms looking to take advantage of growth opportunities in wealth management have a new resource that aligns PE communications with industry-specific public relations, marketing and brand strategy.
Haven Tower Group recently announced a strategic alliance with Cardinal Communications Strategies called the Cardinal Haven Initiative. The new venture pairs Haven Tower’s industry-specific expertise across RIAs, hybrids, dual registrants, family offices and wealth platforms with Cardinal’s experience helping private equity firms communicate in markets that are intensely competitive in capturing high-quality deal flow.
“We’ve seen a recurring dynamic in the market,” said Joe Kuo, Founder & CEO of Haven Tower Group and Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Ascentix Partners. “Private equity firms active in wealth management often retain agencies that do a great job for PE generally — but wealth management isn’t their daily world. Then portfolio companies feel stuck, because they need a partner that’s fully immersed in the advisor ecosystem. This alliance fixes that problem.”
The Cardinal Haven Initiative builds on a longstanding professional relationship between Mr. Kuo and Marc Raybin, Founder & President of Cardinal Communications. While closely collaborating via the Cardinal Haven Initiative, both Haven Tower and Cardinal Communications will continue as stand-alone, independent firms under their longstanding leadership teams, operations, strategic visions and brand identities in all other areas of their respective businesses.
“Our Cardinal Haven Initiative is an exciting alliance that addresses multiple practical needs on both sides of any private equity transaction in the wealth management space. It’s also a strategic partnership that has happened very organically, as part of a relationship between each other built over many years,” said Mr. Raybin. “Sponsors want sponsor-level communications rigor, and portfolio companies want an agency that truly understands their industry. Haven Tower brings that wealth management fluency, and we bring private equity communications discipline. Together we can support both, without either firm changing who it is.”
The Cardinal Haven Initiative is intended to support communications needs across the full lifecycle of private equity ownership in wealth management — from pre-deal narrative positioning and sponsor visibility, to integration, growth communications and exit.
Cardinal Communications joins the Haven Tower Alliance, a curated network of independent agencies with complementary capabilities, expertise and strategic relationships that work closely with Haven Tower to expand client support across the wealth management industry.
The Cardinal announcement closely follows Haven Tower’s alliance with Conway Communications, an investor relations and financial communications firm. Haven Tower is also a Strategic Partner Firm of Ascentix Partners, a consortium of firms providing consulting, M&A advisory, technology and operations, outsourced compliance supervision and brand elevation to the wealth management industry.
