Hightower Taps Gurinder Ahluwalia as President
The RIA has also named Michael DiBiasio, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, as its COO.
Gurinder Ahluwalia — a financial services and fintech veteran who earlier led AssetMark and Genworth Wealth Management — has been tapped as president by Hightower Advisors, according to the firm’s latest ADV filing.
HighTower’s ADV filing also names Michael DiBiasio, a longtime managing director at Morgan Stanley (2008-2024), as chief operating officer, and Daniel Berg, an executive director of corporate finance at Hightower, as chief financial officer.
(Ahluwalia’s name appears in Schedule A of Hightower’s ADV filing dated March 28, as reported earlier by CityWire and WealthManagement.)
While the role of president is a new one at the company, Ahluwalia has been deeply involved with Hightower since 2018 and its private equity owner Thomas H. Lee Partners since 2016, as highlighted in his LinkedIn profile.
During the start of his tenure as an executive partner at Thomas Lee, Ahluwalia also was the CEO at 280 CapMarkets, a fintech firm he co-founded that later merged with InspereX. Before his time at AssetMark and Genworth (2008-2014), he rose through the ranks to serve as the president and CEO of GE Private Asset Management.
In a statement about the leadership shuffle, Hightower Chairman and CEO Bob Oros said Ahluwalia’s and DiBiasio’s appointments, in particular, reflect the firm’s proactive approach to growth and scalability: “Hightower Advisors continues to expand its executive team by adding talented leaders who can support our business and client objectives.”
With Ahluwalia and DiBiasio’s appointments, “we’re supporting the structure of growth and at the same time ensuring that we can continue to drive momentum for our advisors in a way that is proactive and scalable,” Oros explained in a statement shared with ThinkAdvisor.
Thanks to a string of recent acquisitions — including a dozen inked in 2023 alone — Hightower’s advisor community now includes over 140 advisory businesses in dozens of states and Washington, D.C. As of Sept. 30, Hightower’s assets under management were roughly $131 billion.
Despite the momentum, other recent hiring news from the RIA aggregator firm saw it cut its staff by about 5%. The layoffs were applied across the corporate organization but did not affect advisors directly, according to the firm, and there were no changes among the firm’s executives as part of the internal adjustments.
Pictured: Gurinder Ahluwalia