David Routh, the former chief fundraiser at UNC Chapel Hill, has been a busy guy since joining New Republic Partners as managing director in early 2023.
Investments under management have grown 40% over the past year, says Routh, who was promoted to president in May. Zelle Dunn, a former Merrill Lynch vice president, was named chief operating officer at the same time.
The CEO remains Tom Hoops, a former Legg Mason and Wells Fargo investment executive. The firm had $2.28 billion of assets under management, including $1.48 billion in discretionary accounts, according to an Aug. 10 regulatory filing.
New Republic was created in 2021 with backing from the Belk-Pilon and Springs-Close-Bowles families, whose ancestors started the Belk department store chain and Springs textiles group, respectively. The six-member executive committee includes Sam Bowles, a managing director and son of Charlotte business leaders Erskine and Crandall Bowles.
The 29-employee company targets high net-worth families and individuals, with a lesser emphasis on endowments and foundations. While most staffers are in Charlotte and Raleigh, it also has offices in Atlanta, Charleston, Denver and Richmond, Virginia.
New Republic promotes its ability to provide sophisticated financial services that might not be available to most investors, while not having a conflict of interest because it doesn’t create its own products
“It’s truly a firm built by two families that had more than $1 billion to invest,” Routh said. “They had access to hard-to-get-to managers and a lot of sophisticated capabilities. We all invest together. The families get nothing special, and we invest alongside them.”
The conventional view that effective performance can result from investing 60% of assets in stocks and 40% in bonds “isn’t working the same way now because of market turbulence,” Routh says. “There’s a need for a more sophisticated approach to investments, which might be as much as 20% to 30% (of a portfolio’s assets) to gain downside protection.”
New Republic started with a minimum investment of $10 million, though it isn’t a hard and fast rule, Routh says. But it has found that its approach tends to work best with portfolios of $20 million or more, he adds.
Some families holding considerable wealth have opted for running their own “family offices,” but seeking a chief investment officer can be a risky hire because of the challenges of investment performance and retaining strong people, Routh notes.
Routh led UNC Chapel Hill’s record $5 billion capital campaign that concluded in 2023. Before joining the university, he worked for the U.S. Trust wealth management company.
More than two years ago, New Republic split its commercial bank into a separate entity. Ralph Strayhorn leads that business. He is a veteran North Carolina banker who chairs the Golden LEAF Foundation, which oversees a $1.4 billion fund that mainly invests in rural economic development projects.
