HighTower was built for breakaway wirehouse teams, offering advisors equity tied to the size of their book and letting existing partner-advisors personally vet new recruits, and it now runs two tracks at once: a network of independent affiliated RIAs alongside Hightower Signature Wealth, a single national advisory brand backed by institutional investment leaders Stephanie Link and Randy Bullard and a partnership with NEPC. It also grows by turning standout affiliates like The Bahnsen Group into branded hubs that absorb other teams, by helping its own affiliated RIAs merge with each other, and by building a shared back-office and investment platform called Hightower One, while its family office services combine NEPC’s institutional investment background with GTBA’s business and family governance expertise for ultra-high-net-worth clients.