'We could buy you a new shark, tank, and some formaldehyde for a couple hundred thousand dollars-- so that's all we're going to insure it for.'
Attorney Ralph Lerner's palms began to sweat.
His client had just bought Damien Hirst's dead shark in a tank of formaldehyde -- titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living --for more than twenty times that amount. By the time Mr. Lerner left his insurance company meeting the company's rep had agreed to insure the shark for more than twice the purchase price. He told the story as part of the Tigres Group's Art Revealed event at the Levin Institute last March.
How do you figure out how much something is worth? And if will it be worth more tomorrow than today? There are all kinds of companies that try to answer such questions.
Jacqui Maduneme's Tigres Group is different -- they don't get paid by steering clients towards one investment over another. Their expertise serves client goals only. They also know that managing money can be a mind-numbing bore. That's why everything they do seeks to engage and enlighten in a way that makes a deeper impression than any other wealth counsel.
Ms. Maduneme knows that money itself cannot buy happiness -- it has no meaning in itself. I has no life in a vault or as figures on a screen. It's what you can do with it -- ensure your family's future, create something that's never existed before, bring a market or community to life -- that makes money meaningful.
Maduneme and her new company want their clients' money comes to do more than just make more money, they want clients' means to have meaning. Even if for some that means buying a fifteen million dollar shark in a box.
