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Sarah would soon graduate from Stanford GSB, and had received entry-level job offers from a number of wealth management firms. A tech-savvy Millennial, she wanted a career that would provide both intellectual challenges and a healthy work/life balance. She had five job lucrative offers to evaluate, and needed to weigh her options carefully. This case describes a hypothetical scenario of a student deciding which wealth management firm is the best fit for her interests, work style, and long-term career goals. The case provides a comprehensive overview of five distinctly different types of wealth management firms, with business models ranging from a traditional private bank with portfolio teams that sold the bank's products to clients, to an investment firm that delivered institutional-quality management to private clients, to a new venture using a technology-driven model designed to replace individual advisers entirely. The business model and fee structure of each type of firm are discussed in detail, along with additional insights into how the firms operate.

Richard Lund had reached an important crossroads in his life. At age 65, Lund had had a great deal of success-and amassed much wealth-but he needed to devise a plan for the future. Namely, he needed to figure out what to do with the wealth of which he was so proud and that he had accumulated as a result of his own hard work and perseverance. This case describes a hypothetical investor faced with the challenges of philanthropy and its role in wealth management and personal objectives. Includes discussions of how much, when, why, and how to give.

Rina Castillo lived the American Dream. A recent graduate of the Stanford School of Engineering, she was the first in her family not only to leave her native Mexico but also to attend and graduate from a university. While at Stanford, Castillo received a cash and stock offer for the advertising network she founded, which left her in a unique and newfound situation of wealth. This case describes a hypothetical investor faced with the challenges of investment strategy and asset allocation implementation, service provider selection, fee structure effects, and passive versus active investing, and rebalancing.

Having identified his "needs and dreams," Paul Schroder had to figure out what to do next. Putting emotions aside, he needed to identify the best options to come up with the required amounts of liquidity at the right times. As Schroder thought through the issues, he viewed his company, Travel Imagination, as the key to his goals. He could continue to manage and own the business, but he was concerned about this asset's concentration and unpredictability in his portfolio. While he was confident that the direct mail company could successfully face the Internet challenge, he was concerned that he might be wrong, and that he would expose his family to too much risk. He knew that he had too much wealth concentrated in this one company, and bad things can happen to good companies. His future support for his daughter Emily depended on it. This case describes a hypothetical investor faced with the challenges of asset allocation, diversification, family businesses, risk, and leverage.

Paul Schroder had recently celebrated his sixty-eighth birthday and was beginning to feel his age. While he recognized that there were many good years ahead, he also realized that it was not too early to begin to think seriously about his retirement and his estate. For years, he had been encouraged to make a careful estate plan, but he always put it off, thinking that he would take care of it at a later time. Now was that later time. This case describes a hypothetical investor faced with the challenges of concentrated wealth, intergenerational transfers, special needs, offspring receiving unearned wealth, philanthropic decisions, and providing for post-career life.