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Prying Eyes
Michelle Leder
11/01/2006
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At Sentient, a private jet membership company that primarily
serves individuals with at least $10 million in assets, an existing client who
refers a traveler who eventually purchases flight time typically receives a case
of his or her favorite wine, according to Kevin Vaughan, Sentient’s chief
marketing officer. Vaughan does not read oenophile’s minds; Sentient customers
complete surveys that ask for their preferred in-flight beverages.
Researchers at major universities and nonprofits are learning
how to pore over SEC filings made by public companies. Their mission is to
ascertain the net worth of company executives and the best way to target them
with personal fundraising appeals.
To obtain customer leads for a new division focusing on
individuals with at least $25 million in investable assets, private bankers at
UBS, the Swiss-based financial services company, maintain close contact with
their investment banking colleagues, who alert them when an entrepreneur is
about to sell a company. With mergers and acquisitions activity stepping up of
late, Frank Minerva, head of the UBS division, says, "It’s important for us to
have a good relationship with the investment banking side" of the
business. | Researchers are learning how to pore over SEC filings. Their mission is to
ascertain the net worth of company executives and the best way to target
them. |
The most invasive reconnoitering has not gone unnoticed by its
increasingly resentful subjects. Indeed, many wealthy individuals are ramping up
their efforts to hide as much of their personal information as possible. For
example, a growing number are eschewing family foundations, with their publicly
available financial records, in favor of donor-advised funds, which are more
discreet. "A lot of these people don’t want the world to know who they’re giving
their money to—the particular causes—because they feel it’s nobody’s business,"
Pearl says. Some of her clients have even hired Internet technologists to try to
shield personal information from Web search engines, such as Google, but their
results have been mixed. Search engines still serve market researchers and
fundraisers as a one-stop shop for many types of often personal, yet public,
information, such as divorce agreements, insider stock sales and real estate
records.TOP VIEW
Market researchers targeting wealthy individuals are going beyond traditional
surveys and focus groups, embracing techniques usually associated with private
detectives. The information they uncover is increasingly popular with—and
incredibly valuable to—a growing number of companies, ranging from luxury goods
vendors to private banks. Affluent families who dislike this scrutiny and
attempt to erect barriers to it have prompted these researchers to become more
sophisticated. |
Behind the Battlements
NancyAnn Akeson runs Total Personal Services, a Garden City,
N.Y., administrative firm that people hire to receive their mail and screen
their phone calls. Her company manages important correspondence such as bills
and financial statements. Few pieces of junk mail—and even fewer unsolicited
phone calls—make it past her vetting process. Akeson says she and her staff
have read and heard nearly every manner of pitch from companies proffering
products to her clients. "Someone is always trying to sell these people some
additional service," she says. "But most don’t want to be sold to. They want to
buy."Unfortunately, erecting an administrative wall does not block
all financial information from market researchers, particularly in transactions
that, by law, are entered into the public record. If a private business owner
sells his company to a publicly traded firm, for example, the law requires the
buyer to disclose the details in SEC filings. One New York-based technology
entrepreneur, who sold his company five years ago for more than $50 million in
what he assumed would be a deal that would go unnoticed, was amazed when someone
from the large public university that he had graduated from 20 years earlier
came calling, armed with detailed information on the sale. "They had to have
read the SEC filings," he says. But market researchers’ efforts to sort human beings into
marketing buckets based on where they vacation, what kind of car they drive or
even how they choose to donate their wealth can backfire and alienate the very
people whom they allege to comprehend. "There seems to be a real voyeurism
involved here," says Bob Kenny, a visiting scholar at the Marpa Center at Naropa
University in Boulder, Colo., and founder of the More Than Money Institute, a
nonprofit group that helps affluent families examine the role of money in their
lives. "When it comes right down to it, people like their privacy, and they
don’t like being stereotyped."
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