Eichner Investment Planning Partners with Cleveland-Based Gries Financial.

The Cincinnati- and Cleveland-Based Companies Join Forces to Expand Presence and Depth of Offerings to Serve Their High-End Client Base.

CINCINNATI -- Eichner Investment Planning announced today that it has reached an agreement to join Gries Financial LLC, a prominent multi-family wealth management firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. The partnership expands the reach, expertise, and service offerings of the two premier regional firms. Together they will continue to provide clients with comprehensive and customized solutions to manage the complexities of significant wealth.

The combined firm serves clients throughout the country, with continued focus on clients in the Midwestern United States. Both firms have stayed consistent with their origins of serving prominent families that are leaders in their respective fields of business, law, medicine, philanthropy and professional sports. The firm will maintain offices in Cincinnati and Cleveland and the affiliation is effective as of October 1, 2009.

Gries Financial was founded by Sally Gries in 1978 as a premier multi-family office in Cleveland. The senior team of Gries Financial has over 100 years of combined investment experience. Alan Eichner founded Eichner Investment Planning in 2003 and previously started the wealth management practice of Ft. Washington Investment Advisors, the investment arm of Western & Southern Financial Group. Rob Herman, a Cincinnati native, Wall Street veteran, and Gries Financial Managing Director, will join Alan Eichner in overseeing the Cincinnati office.

"Alan Eichner and Eichner Investment Planning maintain a sophisticated and well known Cincinnati client base that has been extremely well served," noted Sally Gries, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gries Financial. "What makes this combination of our firms work so well is a shared, uncompromised value system that we feel is vital in serving high end clients."

"The Gries Financial team is deep, provides obvious synergy with the Eichner practice, and has a successful track record of over 30 years," added Alan Eichner, President of Eichner Investment Planning. "With our respective high profile clients in mind, Gries Financial shares my perspective on protecting client wealth, transparency, client service, and confidentiality. The Gries Financial tag line is 'Integrity Endures' and they live it."

Services provided by the combined entity include investment management, wealth management, and traditional family office services. More specifically, clients have relied on the firms for asset allocation and investment decisions, retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, education funding, life change analysis, intergenerational counseling and charitable and family gifting, among other services.