Team Name: Oberlander Timmerwilke Group
Firm: Merrill Wealth Management
Senior Members: Sharon Oberlander, Andy Timmerwilke, Thomas Ratos
Location: Chicago, IL
Team Custodied Assets: $2.2 billion
Background: Growing up in Canada, Sharon Oberlander always wanted to be a social worker, double majoring in psychology and sociology at the University of Manitoba. After moving to the United States, she took a job in banking as she looked for a role in social work. She quickly began to enjoy working with clients and decided to become a financial advisor, joining Merrill in 1978 as one of the early women in the industry. Her managing partner, Andy Timmerwilke, similarly chanced upon the profession shortly after college, becoming enamored upon his first visit to a Merrill office; He joined the firm in 2000. Timmewilke and Oberlander had separate teams for many years but eventually joined forces in 2019. Today there are 14 employees—including six advisors—who serve some 250 clients, including high net worth families, entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate executives.
Client Relationships: “It doesn’t matter how many zeros a client may have, everyone requires time,” says Oberlander. “I’ve always felt like in our industry, the best way to operate is like a startup culture: We always try to improve and think outside of the box,” she says. Her team will host monthly virtual luncheons for clients to talk about topics ranging from market outlooks and investments to cybersecurity and cognitive decline. “We are very proactive in eliciting feedback from our clients—not only for these educational events but also how they want to be served,” says Timmerwilke.
Competitive Edge: Oberlander has worked with some families for up to four generations: She credits this to the team’s highly customized and tailored approach. “A lot of teams just operate to scale, but being able to spend a lot of time on each client is an advantage.”
Investment Philosophy/Strategy: “What our families are typically most interested in is for us to help them focus on the long term and mute the noise that is always happening,” says Timmerwilke. “Clients really like income—in all market cycles, whether that is from dividends, interest or municipal bonds.” When it comes to equities, the team maintains a balance between growth and value while remaining overweight U.S. stocks, with special attention paid to retirement income strategies like dividend-paying stocks. “I tell clients that dividends and interest are like rent: Whether the value of your real estate goes up or down, you are still collecting your rent,” says Oberlander. Many of their clients also have tactical allocations to alternatives, specifically in areas such as private credit, private equity and real estate.
Investment Outlook: The team is fairly optimistic about markets over the near term, citing strong corporate profits. “We should see broader participation in markets beyond just the Magnificent 7 stocks,” Timmerwilke predicts. “Lower interest rates should add some relief to other parts of the market like small and mid-cap stocks, while lower cost of capital will spur mergers and acquisitions which will be good for private markets.” He adds that a normalizing yield curve should bring more normalcy to bond markets, while trends like artificial intelligence will also continue to boost certain areas of the market. “Over decades of history, investors usually get paid well to be positive rather than negative—this time is no different than that,” says Timmerwilke.