Investment firms in New York: 2,051 SEC-registered advisers, the 10 largest by assets and how to check one

This page is for people looking for New York investment firms: investors comparing managers, job seekers, allocators building a list, and B2B sellers whose customers are asset managers, hedge funds and private equity firms. It counts them from the SEC's adviser registrations and from the Census Bureau, names the largest, shows how to check any firm, and works through a prospecting example.

Two ways to count New York investment firms

The SEC figures are our count from the SEC's monthly adviser file, using each firm's main office ZIP code to place it in a borough. The Census code is broader than "investment advisers": NAICS 5239 also covers trust, fiduciary and custody activities, miscellaneous intermediation and other investment activities, and it counts locations rather than firms, including branch offices of firms headquartered elsewhere. In the other direction, the SEC count leaves out most advisers managing under $100 million, which register with their state securities regulator instead.

SEC-registered advisers in New York City

New York City has 79.2% of the 2,591 SEC-registered advisers based in New York State and 11.9% of the 17,210 in the country.

Most New York advisers are small businesses: 834 report 10 or fewer employees. Form ADV also says whom they advise. Of the 2,051, 1,561 advise pooled investment vehicles (hedge, private equity, credit and other private funds), 428 advise high net worth individuals, 299 other individuals, 246 registered investment companies such as mutual funds and ETFs, 233 charities and 220 pension plans. A firm can have several client types.

The largest New York advisers by assets

Figures are as each firm reported in its latest Form ADV. Treat them with care: regulatory assets include the gross assets of private funds, so a leveraged hedge fund manager such as Millennium reports far more than its investors' capital, and assets overlap where one adviser sub-advises another's funds. Large groups also register several advisers (BlackRock and J.P. Morgan each appear twice here), so this is a ranking of registrations, not of parent companies.

The Census count

County Business Patterns 2023 counts 2,719 establishments in NAICS 5239 across the five boroughs, 3.15% of the US total of 86,389. Citywide, 1,616 have 1 to 4 employees; the Census Bureau doesn't publish the other size classes for the five counties combined, and the citywide employment total is not reported (high-noise figure: its confidentiality noise changed the value by 5% or more).

Manhattan alone has 88.8% of the establishments, and they paid an average of $478,721 per employee in 2023 (our calculation from CBP payroll). Within it, portfolio management (NAICS 523920) had 1,184 establishments, 69,543 employees and average pay of $510,577.

Public investment firms headquartered in New York

Apollo's and KKR's totals include their insurance businesses (Athene and Global Atlantic). Most New York investment firms are private partnerships and file Form ADV, not 10-Ks.

How to check a New York investment firm

1. Look it up on Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD). Every SEC- and state-registered adviser's Form ADV is there, including Part 2, the plain-English brochure on fees, conflicts and disciplinary history.
2. Check the disciplinary answers in Form ADV Item 11 and, for anyone who also sells securities, FINRA's BrokerCheck.
3. Match the firm to your need. A private fund manager (pooled vehicles) won't take an individual account; a wealth manager lists high net worth individuals as clients.
4. Ask who holds the money. The custodian should be a separate, named bank or broker.

Selling to New York investment firms

Illustrative example. The company, rates and results are fictional, to show the method.

Battery Park Fund Services (bpfundservices.example) provides outsourced fund administration and investor reporting for emerging managers.

• New York registered advisers with $100 million to $1 billion of regulatory assets: 740.
• Of those, the ones that advise pooled investment vehicles: 579.
• It assumes 30% are unhappy enough with their administrator to take a meeting each year: about 170.
• Winning 12 at $120,000 a year in fees is $1.44 million of new annual revenue.

Its buyers are the chief operating officer or CFO, and the trigger is a new fund launch, which shows up as a change in the private funds section of the firm's Form ADV. The SEC's 2024 amendments to Regulation S-P, which require registered advisers to run an incident response program and notify affected customers within 30 days, give it a second opening around data handling. Finding the COO at each of 579 firms is the account research Bebop does for each name.

Subject: Investor reporting for [Fund] II

Hi [first name],

I saw [Firm] added a new fund in its latest Form ADV. Second funds are usually when investor reporting stops fitting in a spreadsheet and the administrator's turnaround starts to show.

We administer funds for New York managers with $100 million to $1 billion, with monthly NAVs in five business days and an investor portal your LPs can log into. Worth a 20-minute comparison with your current setup?

[Your name], Battery Park Fund Services

Next step: for the national ranking, see the largest asset management firms, or the industry code most investment firms use, the NAICS code for private equity.