Industry Award WinnerThe complexity of significant wealth can feel like a full-time job. Business owners preparing for an exit face a maze of tax, legal, and investment decisions that will shape the rest of their lives. Executives with concentrated stock positions must balance opportunity against risk. Athletes and entertainers with compressed earning windows need strategies that can sustain them for decades beyond their careers. We understand these challenges because we've spent more than two decades helping clients navigate them. The Stephens Group serves business owners, corporate executives, and professional athletes and entertainers—clients whose wealth is often concentrated, whose situations are complex, and whose decisions carry consequences that extend across generations. We work within Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management and the Family Office Resources Group, giving us access to institutional capabilities. But resources alone aren't enough.
What sets us apart is how we deploy them: through close, ongoing relationships with our clients and their other trusted advisors. We coordinate with your attorneys, CPAs, and business consultants to help build strategies that are truly integrated—where your investment plan, your estate plan, and your tax strategy all work together. Our commitment is straightforward: we want to be the advisors your family trusts for the most important financial decisions you'll ever make. Whether that means structuring a business sale, diversifying a concentrated position, or helping ensure your wealth supports the people and causes that matter most to you, we bring the experience and attention your situation deserves.
HOW WE WORK TOGETHER
Step 1: Understanding Your World Every engagement begins with listening. We want to understand not just your balance sheet, but your goals, your concerns, and what success looks like for you and your family. This conversation shapes everything that follows.
Step 2: Coordinating Your Team You likely work with attorneys, CPAs, and other advisors. We see our role as the financial quarterback—coordinating with your existing team to help ensure your tax strategy, estate plan, and investment approach all work together. No silos, no conflicting advice.
Step 3: Building Your Investment Strategy Based on your goals, risk tolerance, and tax situation, we develop a customized investment approach. For clients with concentrated positions or upcoming liquidity events, this often involves sophisticated strategies to manage risk while helping preserve upside.
Step 4: Implementing with Precision Execution matters. We leverage Morgan Stanley's global platform to implement your strategy efficiently, paying close attention to tax implications, transaction costs, and timing.
Step 5: Monitoring and Adapting Your life will change—new opportunities, family milestones, market shifts. We conduct regular reviews and proactive outreach to ensure your strategy evolves with you. You'll always know where you stand and why.
Step 6: Serving Your Family Across Generations For many of our clients, the goal isn't just managing wealth—it's transferring values and preparing the next generation. We offer family governance support, financial education for heirs, and coordination with estate planning attorneys to help your legacy endure.
Recognition
2024, 2025, 2026 - Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Management Teams
Source: Forbes (Awarded Jan 2026). Data compiled by SHOOK Research LLC based for the period 3/31/24–3/31/25. https://www.morganstanley.com/what-we-do/wealth-management/forbes-top-wealth-advisors-lists-2026?gv6=7706b80d-69c0-4e22-be84-9493708a494b
2020, 2022 - 2025 - Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisors
Source: Forbes.com (Awarded 2020, 2022 - 2025). Data compiled by SHOOK Research LLC based 12-month time period concluding in June of year prior to the issuance of the award.
https://www.morganstanley.com/what-we-do/wealth-management/forbes-top-wealth-advisors-lists-2025
Alternatives are the investments that go beyond traditional stocks and bonds. They can open doors to unique opportunities to help grow and protect your wealth, and have long sought to offer enhanced returns, portfolio diversification, lower volatility, as well as potential tax efficiency.
Our leading alternatives platform offers 200+ third-party and proprietary funds, including first look and exclusive opportunities, that may help qualified investors enhance returns, reduce volatility, manage taxes and generate income—while maintaining a goals-based approach for asset allocation.
Our platform offers world-renowned hedge fund managers specializing in a variety of strategies. Hedge funds have become increasingly popular with a broader segment of the investing public due to their ability to offer diversification and higher potential returns when compared to traditional equity investments
Learn more about 1031 Exchanges and the benefits that they can offer
Morgan Stanley Wealth Management announced the launch of its Private Markets Transaction Desk, a concierge service that empowers eligible shareholders and investors to buy and sell eligible private company shares in the secondary market.
Amid volatility in stocks and bonds, institutional and individual investors might seek diversification in the growing private equity secondaries market.
Morgan Stanley continues to be a leader in both Alternative Investments and tax-advantaged solutions and services. Alternative Investments can do more than generate returns that are less dependent on the direction of the broader stock and bond markets. They also offer qualified investors a more versatile set of strategies for pursuing their goals.
Bryan Stephens, CFP®, CPWA®, CEPA®
Brendan Bacarella, CFP®*
Josh Lerner
Carsyn Cebulski
Angelo Loumbas
Mary Beth Powers
Brook Solliday
