Corient Acquires $2.6B Cayman Islands Family Office
Corient is planting a flag in the Cayman Islands with the acquisition of a $2.6 billion multi-family office.
FortCay Family Advisory is a wealth manager working with 14 ultra-high-net-worth families, offering wealth management, estate planning and other family office services.
The firm was founded by Matt Houghton and Billy Harty, who said the move would give their firm “access to the depth and scale of a global firm,” while Corient Chief Executive Officer Kurt MacAlpine lauded the firm’s “outstanding business.”
“A meaningful share of the world’s most complex family wealth is structured and administered in the Cayman Islands,” he said. “Many of our clients live, work and invest across borders – establishing a presence in Cayman deepens our ability to serve them.”
According to the firm’s site, Harty worked as a Wall Street bond broker, at a German investment bank and brokerage firm in Ireland, before moving to the Caymans, where he was an investment advisor for RBC Dominion Securities and headed a London-headquartered multi-family office.
Houghton served as the CEO of GroupHealth Benefit Solutions, a Canada-based benefits plan administrator, for nearly 15 years and remains on the board. FortCay was founded in 2023 and is registered with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.
Corient was founded in 2020 and has become one of the world’s largest RIAs, with about $572 billion in global assets. The Miami-based firm spawned from the rebranding of the U.S. wealth business of the Toronto-based CI Financial, which was taken private in 2025 by Abu Dhabi-based Mubadala Capital.
Corient is rapidly expanding its scope (and AUM) via an acquisition spree. Last month, the firm announced a deal to buy Summit Trail Advisors, a New York-based RIA with the Dynasty Financial Partners Network overseeing $21 billion in client assets. Summit Trail launched when a group of former Barclays advisors left to form their own team, and the group became partners at Corient as part of the move. (The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.)
Other acquisitions include July’s Seven Bridges Advisors, a New York-based RIA with $4.9 billion in managed assets. In June, the RIA completed a deal to acquire two U.K. firms overseeing a combined $175 billion in assets. (Corient previously announced the deals last September.)
This year, Corient also acquired the Bedrock Group, a European wealth manager with $10.7 billion in assets, with offices in Geneva, London, Monaco and Lisbon. The firm also bought Capital Advisors, a Tulsa, Okla.-based wealth manager with $7.8 billion in managed assets, with a presence in Texas and seven other states.
In an interview last month with Wealth Management, MacAlpine detailed his push for a “global” wealth manager. He believes Corient was the only choice in that regard, arguing that banks may be “multi-jurisdictional” but aren’t global, with “local silos, local P&Ls, local compensation plans.
“That set of circumstances does not set people up well for collaboration because it’s zero-sum,” he said. “In our model, when we have a client across four jurisdictions that wants to consolidate assets, every single person here who’s a partner is in the same equity.”
