Hubbard Garber

Hubbard R. Garber is the founder and a Managing Director of Barrington Partners, a Boston-based consulting and advisory firm he started in 1995 that serves the mutual-fund and investment-management industry. He holds the CFA and CFP designations and carries FINRA Series 79 and Series 63 licenses; securities transactions associated with the firm are conducted through the broker-dealer FNEX Capital. He is a graduate of Beloit College.

Garber describes more than 25 years of experience across the mutual-fund and investment-management sectors, spanning both marketing and operational disciplines as well as investment banking. Before founding Barrington Partners, he worked at two custodial banks — IFTC in Kansas City and Investors Bank & Trust in Boston — and earlier held a role with IDS/American Express (now Ameriprise/American Express Financial Advisors). This operations-and-distribution grounding shapes the firm's consulting practice, which covers business planning, service-provider (custodian/administrator/transfer-agent) evaluation and selection, fee analysis, and operations reviews.

On the transaction side, Garber's investment-banking work includes both buy-side and sell-side engagements involving the mergers and acquisitions of investment advisors, mutual-fund and hedge-fund back-office/operations groups, financial-services software companies, and mutual-fund complexes. Barrington Partners organizes its offering into three areas: "Insight & Intelligence" (benchmark surveys, 15(c) board reporting, best-practices research and industry forums), "Tailored Solutions" (fee analysis, vendor selection, project oversight and board advisory), and "Transitions & Transactions" (M&A support, fairness opinions and due diligence).

• Not an angel/seed investor in the venture sense. Public materials position Garber as an M&A advisor and consultant to asset managers, not as a personal angel or seed-stage venture backer. No portfolio of startup investments is disclosed.
• Where "deals" happen: M&A of investment advisors, mutual-fund and hedge-fund operations groups, fund-servicing businesses and financial-services software companies — typically established, revenue-generating firms rather than pre-revenue startups.
• Selection lens (advisory): deep focus on fund operations, service-provider economics, distribution and regulatory/board (15(c)) considerations — reflecting his custodial-bank and fund-operations background.
• Firm value proposition: independent benchmarking data and industry-specific operating knowledge applied to fee analysis, vendor selection, board advisory, fairness opinions and due diligence.