Investment boss Curtin backs families, women and tech for long-term

As the outspoken chief investment officer at AlTi Tiedemann Global, Nancy Curtin has a strong historical perspective as well as a forward-looking mindset. Not only does she offer family office experience, but Ms Curtin has also held senior roles at fund houses Close Brothers, Barings and Schroders.

“Over the last decade, so much of what happened in the world was led by the US. And so, if you got basically a couple of things right, it was going long the US, long technology, long the dollar,” says Ms Curtin, an engaging speaker who captivates audiences with her typically frank opinions. “The rest of the time that you spent actually didn’t yield much by way of return, even though you worked really hard on it.”

The decade ahead, she forecasts, will prove very different, with a return to active management and a diversified view of the world. This means a much broader menu of assets will be brought back into action, says Ms Curtin, who oversees more than $80bn at the US-listed wealth manager, majority owned by employees and “affiliated partners”.

The firm, now employing 500 staff, was formed in January 2023 through the merger and Nasdaq listing of Tiedemann Advisors, a US wealth adviser founded in 1999, TIG, and UK-based Alvarium Investments. Since going public, the expansion drive at AlTi Tiedemann Global has included acquiring AL Wealth Partners in Singapore and the Kontora Family Office in Germany, in addition to East End Advisors and Envoi in the US.

While her customers at previous firms have often included pension schemes, she has no doubt about the increasing importance of the family office market. Ms Curtin talks about a global universe of 8,000 family offices managing $3tn in aggregate. “That’s twice the size of the endowment and foundation market,” she calculates. “In essence these are just huge sums of money which are very important institutionally.”

Together with her team of 50 investment professionals, she is targeting the next generation, ready to benefit from a $100tn wealth transfer over the next decade, and highlighting women inheritors of wealth in particular. Both require intimate understanding of mentality and values, she believes.

“We start these conversations because our clients have more wealth than they can spend in five, 10 or 20 lifetimes. So we ask: what’s the purpose of your work? Where do you want to see it represented? What’s the legacy you want to leave on this planet? Where do you want your kids to invest? How do you want your values to show up in your capital?”

Emotions are key to the client relationship, says Ms Curtin. “These are powerful conversations for ultra-high net worth clients, because it moves wealth from just a financial statistic to an emotional sense of purpose and engagement.”

Private embrace

Key to working with this new client cohort is an embrace of private, unlisted assets. “The US stockmarket is very concentrated, with seven stocks that are 30 per cent of the index. That’s not really diversification,” she muses, recalling the early days of her investment career, when she had 10,000 American companies to choose from. “Now you’re down to 2,000, so there’s a lot that goes on in the private markets,” which now dominate much of the global economy.

“I think that’s quite exciting, because you have asset classes like infrastructure, private credit, and hedge funds and commodities, that deliver equity-like returns, and so you’re able to get much more diversification,” says Ms Curtin, who worked running venture capital funds earlier in her career.

Her employer is also benefiting from such direct investments. In 2024, the firm secured a strategic investment of up to $450m in growth capital from Allianz X and Constellation Wealth Capital and later launched a private debt programme through the Allianz partnership, opening up access for ultra-high net worth investors.

In addition to these alternative allocations, she expects a “revival of international markets…in a world where the only thing that previously worked was the US, its currency and technology. So it’s nice to see some change.”

Her fascination with geopolitics and macroeconomics is combined with understanding of bottom-up company cashflows, which she then matches with market-driving megatrends.

“If you’re able to identify those trends, make sure they’re represented in client portfolios. Then you have a greater chance of delivering these long-term returns for your clients,” she adds.

Currently she is impressed by the “combination of quantum [computing] and AI together”, linked to the crucial dynamic of energy supply. “I think technological change in the next 10 years is going to be off the charts: exciting, disruptive, crazy, something we hadn’t even imagined,” she suggests. “I mean, who could have envisioned ChatGPT? But I do think none of this is possible without access to power.”

Power to the people

This will particularly be focused on decarbonisation initiatives, which will improve natural gas supply, she says. Amid the energy-linked discussions is her analysis of the potential US trade deal with EU leaders, of whom she is more than a little critical.

While many investment leaders are moving away from allocating to US markets due to President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, attack on domestic and multilateral institutions and stifling of debate, Ms Curtin is far more scathing of the “crazy, bureaucratic” way European leaders are managing their international relations.

“I think it’s the sclerosis of Europe that drives many people crazy, including Trump. If you take a look at energy, obviously Europe imports about 45 per cent of its LNG from the US. Trump wants them to sign long-term 20 to 25 year contracts,” while US companies still have the money to build out liquification and terminals.

“Now that makes total capital sense to me,” says Ms Curtin, starting to enjoy her argument. “Does that not make sense to you? You need something. We have that thing. We are the most stable and secure supplier of that thing. Otherwise, sure, get it from Qatar and Nigeria. If you want to get it from the States, it’s going to cost. You seem to have a problem with that.”

On China, Ms Curtin is slightly more positive. “China was almost un-investable two years ago,” she reflects, before the latest technological revolution rekindled international interest. “But as a result of their technological prowess, DeepSeek sort of re-opened China to the world, which thought: ‘Wow, China!’”

While she has seen a changed attitude in President Xi Jinping, in his increased openness, at a time when his US counterpart appears “more interventionist and aggressive”, Ms Curtin urges caution in embracing Beijing. “China looks a little bit better. But we have to tiptoe back in and it’s still a small market. We like to think not just about China, but Asia more broadly, as a growth opportunity, including Japan, which I think is still going through a very interesting transformation in terms of increasing shareholder value.”

Despite being based in London and often dealing with European clients, Ms Curtin sees relations mainly from a US perspective, praising Mr Trump’s “natural style”, his “transactional nature” and “instinct to smell a deal”, in both political and economic negotiations, even though she understands much of this can be “off-putting for some”.

Indeed, her own direct approach sometimes contrasted to the more conservative mentality of the UK investment community. 

Known as a vocal supporter of internet and technology trends two decades ago, she would make an occasional mega-bet that paid off. “Nancy was never backward at coming forward. She had a ball-breaking approach with a strong marketing and sales pitch,” recalls one former colleague. “But in VC you only need one project to succeed in order to be successful. And Nancy is still going strong.”