Sapient Capital, an Indianapolis-based registered investment advisor with over $23 billion in assets under supervision, has brought on board Joshua Mandelbaum as a partner and wealth advisor, joining from J.P. Morgan Private Bank, where he managed over $1 billion in client assets.
The move marks what Sapient is touting as a recruitment drive for private wealth advisors, following last week’s announcement that it had hired former UBS recruiter David Larado to head its recruitment and retention efforts. Larado said Mandelbaum had been in conversation with the firm before he joined, but he’s the kind of advisor the firm expects to keep drawing.
“He is growth-forward and looking to build something with his client base here,” Larado said.
Sapient was founded in 2023 by three former Stifel advisors, James Knall, Jeffrey Cohen and Thomas Pence. In 2024, it appointed CEO James Rooney, who had previously led Corient Capital, which was acquired by Toronto-based CI Financial in 2022. Sapient is majority-owned by employees, with a minority stake held by the private equity firm Lee Equity Partners.
Mandelbaum will be based in Sapient’s New York office, but noted in the announcement he would reconnect with his “roots in the Midwest” with the Indianapolis-based firm. Mandelbaum had been with J.P. Morgan for 17 years as a private banker and investment specialist, having joined the firm after graduating from Indiana University in 2008.
Larado joined Sapient after 19 years at UBS. During his tenure, he was the architect of the firm’s advisor retirement programs, worked on its family office solution, and most recently helped rebuild its advisor recruiting team.
At Sapient, Larado said he will be doing advisor recruiting as well as M&A work among RIAs. He made the move in part because he sees the migration from wirehouses to the independent channel continuing to gain momentum in the coming years.
“The independent channel 10 years ago is unrecognizable from what it is today,” he said. “I’m a believer that this trend will continue to have momentum as firms and offerings evolve, and our ability as independents will help us stand out from wirehouses.”
He’s also a believer in the upper high-net-worth client segment and pointed to Sapient’s work in alternative investments and family office-type services to continue fostering this type of client.
The firm’s family office services team is staffed with alumni from Morgan Stanley, Northern Trust, BMO and Goldman Sachs Ayco. Its alternative investment platform is led by Karim Khairallah, who specialized in alternatives at Oaktree Capital Management, General Atlantic Partners and J.P. Morgan Capital.
Sapient’s most recent Form ADV shows that 614 of its clients are considered high-net-worth, which means they either have more than $2.2 million in net assets excluding their primary residence or have more than $1.1 million being managed by the RIA. Another 290 clients do not fall in this category.
The firm’s primary custodian is BNY Pershing.
Stifel filed a complaint against Sapient’s founders after launch, accusing them of anti-competitive behavior when they brought almost their entire team over to the RIA from the independent broker/dealer. The case was moved to FINRA arbitration, where the regulatory body dismissed the charges and fined Stifel $7 million in attorneys’ fees.
