What’s one of the top reasons clients decide to part ways with their financial adviser? If your answer is poor service or experience, you would be right. According to Morningstar, the number one reason investors fire advisers is a lack of quality service. It’s not only about wealth management or returns — it’s about delivering an exceptional client experience that keeps clients loyal and eager to recommend you. Other reports note that three of the top four reasons clients leave their advisers are ...

It started as a global public health emergency, but the spillover effects of the COVID-19 pandemic spread well beyond human immune systems to a host of economic sectors, including the infrastructure of supply chains. In particular, the transport sector faced unfamiliar challenges. First there was a lack of demand. Then came a labor shortage. Even now in 2025, we continue to see ...

In 2022, economic uncertainty, rising interest rates and the need to preserve capital led traditional lenders such as banks, life insurance companies and CMBS investors to reduce their exposure to real estate. Industrial properties were particularly negatively affected, due to their recent emergence as a property type favored by the institutional equity investment community that had increasingly come to rely on debt to generate successively higher returns. Within this evolving landscape, the private credit market is ...

Ian Rickwood, founder and chairman of Henley Investment Management: “We see car washes as the next self-storage. The market has already attracted capital from corporate buyout private equity, such as KKR and Blackstone. However, we also see an opportunity for the private equity groups to follow suit in the near future, given the relatively low operational aspects of the business.”

Every year, without fail, the sun showers the Earth’s surface with about 10,000 times more energy than all of humanity uses each year — roughly 170 trillion megawatt hours of potential electricity. That exceeds the latent energy contained of all known fossil fuel reserves on the planet. Of course, capturing all of that sunlight landing on all 197 million square miles of the Earth’s surface is sheer folly. Yet, if human-made solar systems capture and convert to electricity a trifling 0.01 percent that sunlight, the entire planet could be powered many times over. In theory, the use of solar panels could ...

Disaster recovery in the United States is stuck in a costly, flawed loop. Every year, wildfires, hurricanes and floods destroy thousands of homes — only for them to be rebuilt using the same vulnerable materials. This cycle of destruction and reconstruction is predictable but preventable. It’s time for a paradigm shift.

An experiment is under way in Ann Arbor, Mich., that could change how communities generate and distribute power in the future. The city, with voters’ strong support, is launching its own sustainable-energy utility. This new utility won’t replace DTE Energy, the local investor-owned power company, or even use DTE’s wires. Instead, Ann Arbor will slowly build out a whole new modern power system, starting with ...

Brian Weiner is the founder of Family Office Resource Group. During his 25 years of experience, he has also built and led multiple family office-focused firms, including Allied Advisors and Excel Global Family Office.

When President Donald Trump imposed sweeping new tariffs on imported goods on April 2, 2025 — upending global trade and sending markets into a tailspin — he presented the move as a response to a crisis. In an executive order released the same day, the White House said the move was necessary to address “the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit.” A trade deficit (when a country imports more than it exports) is often viewed as ...

The data center industry in Asia Pacific continues to demonstrate dynamic growth with no signs of a deceleration. Southeast Asia is at the forefront of this growth, receiving billions of dollars of investments from hyperscalers and colocation operators, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia. In June 2024, Google Cloud announced a ...

Green building strategies are quickly becoming a priority for real estate decision makers in 2025, as the built environment accounts for up to 42 percent of global annual emissions. Further, with office supply predicted to drop by 73 percent amid a tightening market and the impacts of climate change, upgrading environmental performance offers a unique opportunity to revitalize at-risk properties. Our research found that ...

What makes for a successful business partnership? Clear communication, shared goals and mutual respect are key. But to ensure the long-term viability of your business, a buy-sell agreement is a must. A buy-sell agreement is a legal document outlining how partners’ ownership stakes will be handled should one of them die, depart or become unable to perform their duties. It’s easy to put off creating this agreement, especially when ...

Tariffs, market volatility, interest-rate uncertainty and worries of a potential recession: In this marked “risk off” investment environment, financial advisers and their clients are seeking investments that may offer strong returns with potentially lower risk. One solution: real estate debt. This growing asset class is emerging as a distinct investment option, providing stable income, downside risk aversion and ...

Judge a man by the company he keeps. Joe Lonsdale would do well on that measure, and he would also likely approve of the sources associated with the adage, as it appears in places such as Aesop’s Fables (circa sixth century B.C., particularly in The Ass and His Purchaser, where the moral states: “A man is known by the company he keeps”); Euripides, the ancient Greek playwright (circa fifth century B.C., “Every man is like the company he is wont to keep”); and the Bible in passages such as ...

Last month, I wrote about some of the people who have made major contributions to the development of the Institutional Real Estate, Inc. platform since our beginning in 1987. These included Larry Hull of Larco Advisors; Stephen Tomczak of Stephen Tomczak and Associates; and Paul Sach, one of the founders of RREEF, which continues today as part of DWS. This month, I’d like to acknowledge some more of the early contributors and supporters. First up are Bob and Sue Toigo. Bob was the former ...

Defined benefit (DB) retirement plans haven’t quite reached “dead as a dodo” stage, but the trend line is obvious. Private-sector DB plans have largely disappeared, with most of the remaining plans being frozen or closed to new entrants. Public-sector defined benefit plans remain more common but face funding challenges, leading to benefit adjustments and hybrid plan structures. This means that those entering the workforce today likely won’t ...