Evercore Wealth, the US business launched a year ago and which has reached $1.5 billion of client assets, is seeing signs that ultra high net worth clients are looking to come on board, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, net income at the firm's parent group rose in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The business was formed by Evercore Partners and is run by former US Trust Corp chief executive Jeff Maurer. Evercore announced its fourth quarter results yesterday.

For now, the target client has $5 million or more in investable assets, compared with the $10 million that many brokerage and wealth management firms demand, the news service said. Yet as Mr Maurer and 15 former US Trust colleagues lead the expansion of their new firm, more of their former super-rich clients are showing interest in making the jump, the report said.

"It's harder to attract clients of that size as a start-up," Mr Maurer was quoted as saying. "The larger accounts were a little reluctant when we started; some clients had more assets than we were managing."

Evercore has 16 partners – all of them being former US Trust executives to help build out a full-service wealth management business. About 90 per cent of Evercore's $1.5 billion in assets comes from the partners' client relationships, Mr Maurer said.

Evercore last week bought Morse, Williams & Co, an investment advisor with $190 million in assets.

Evercore logged record net revenues of $109 million for the fourth quarter, up by 217 per cent versus the same period in 2008 and 31 per cent versus the third quarter of 2009.

The firm had $4.5 billion of assets under management at the quarter-end, up 26 per cent compared to the third quarter of 2009, it said in a statement on its website.