Corient buys into Cayman, where the structures sit rather than the clients
Corient has agreed to acquire FortCay Family Advisory, a Cayman Islands multi-family office overseeing about $2.6bn for 14 families. The deal takes the consolidator into an offshore centre for the first time.
On 23 September 2026, Corient announced it had agreed to buy FortCay Family Advisory, a Cayman Islands wealth manager and multi-family office. FortCay works with 14 ultra-high-net-worth families and oversees about $2.6bn in client assets, according to the announcement. Terms were not disclosed, and Corient expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.
A small book, a deliberate location
By the standards of Corient’s recent buying, FortCay is tiny. The Miami-based firm reports roughly $572bn in client assets, more than 300 partners and over 2,700 employees. A $2.6bn book of 14 families does not move that number.
The jurisdiction is the point. FortCay was founded by Billy Harty and Matt Houghton, and provides wealth management, estate planning and family office services on the ground in Cayman. Chief executive Kurt MacAlpine said that “a meaningful share of the world’s most complex family wealth is structured and administered in the Cayman Islands”, and that a local presence deepens the firm’s ability to serve clients who live, work and invest across borders. Harty pointed to Corient’s partnership structure as the reason his firm agreed to sell.
Until now Corient has served Cayman-domiciled trusts, holding companies and investment vehicles from outside the islands. Buying a licensed local business changes that, and gives every other Corient office something to route work into.
The twelve months behind it
The FortCay deal is the latest in a year of cross-border transactions. In September 2025, Corient announced a two-firm deal adding more than $214bn in client assets from Stonehage Fleming and Stanhope Capital, which took it across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In April 2026 it agreed to buy Geneva’s Bedrock Group, with about $10.7bn in client assets, and set out plans to launch in Canada with roughly C$10bn from Northwood Family Office and Coriel Capital. In June it confirmed the purchase of Letus Private Office in Paris, which oversees about €4.1bn and specialises in vineyards, hotels, aircraft and yachts.
InvestmentNews reports that DeVoe & Company counted 167 RIA transactions in the first half of 2026, above the previous first-half record of 148, and ranked Corient among the ten most acquisitive firms in the market.
What it means for family offices
Consolidation has mostly followed the clients. A buyer enters a market because wealthy families live there. This deal follows the paperwork instead, and it points to a contest among the large multi-family offices over who can sit inside the offshore structures rather than instruct someone else to handle them.
Families with Cayman vehicles get something out of that. One group holding both the advisory relationship and a presence where the structures sit removes a handover. It also concentrates more of the picture in one place. The trustee, the local administrator and the investment adviser have usually been separate firms, and the separation was doing work.
The other question is the familiar one. FortCay’s fourteen families chose a founder-led office of a particular size. Corient’s model retains acquired principals as partners, which is designed to keep the same people in the room. Whether the service inside a $572bn group feels the same is something each family will answer for itself, and it is a fair question to put to any adviser whose ownership has just changed.
Sources: InvestmentNews; Private Banker International.