William Wurts still has an office at the consulting firm that once bore his name, but since April 13 the company has been called Verus Inc.
The investment consulting business of what was Wurts & Associates is now called Verus Advisory Inc. and its discretionary management and outsourced CIO subsidiary, Verus Investors LLC. The outsourced CIO unit previously was known as KEI Investments LLC.
Even though Mr. Wurts sold the last of his ownership in the Seattle-based firm in 2013, he still carries on the tradition of taking new employees out to lunch, Jeffrey MacLean, CEO of Verus, said in an interview.
And there's been a lot of that lately, Mr. MacLean said. Verus — which means real, genuine and truth in Latin — has added about 15 new employees a year over the past couple of years, growing to 73, Mr. MacLean said. The firm added a number of employees in areas including risk, strategic research and operations, he said.
According to its April 1 preliminary estimates, Verus has more than $110 billion in assets under advisement, of which $20 billion is outsourced CIO. The total AUA represents a 40% increase from June 30, according to Pensions & Investments' data.
As the new name reflects “our job is to help prevent Wall Street from taking advantage of (Verus clients') financial assets,” Mr. MacLean said.
