The first week of March marked an unusually busy week for wealth management M&A.
According to DeVoe & Company, a consulting firm that specializes in M&A and wealth management companies, 49 transactions were announced in the first two months of the year. This week, seven high-profile deals were announced.
In case you missed them, here is a roundup of those deals.
Monterey, California–based Modern Wealth Management announced the acquisition of Rochester, New York–based Beltz Ianni & Associates, a corporate retirement planning and individual wealth management firm with more than $1.2 billion in AUM. The acquisition brings Modern Wealth’s total AUM to more than $3 billion, less than a year after it launched. This is the RIA’s sixth acquisition — and its first acquisition on the East Coast — as it tries to build out a holistic wealth management firm. With the deal, Beltz Ianni has ended its broker-dealer affiliation with LPL Financial.
San Francisco–based Perigon Wealth Management announced two acquisitions this week. The RIA bought Syracuse, New York–based Blue Water Capital Management and Southfield, Michigan–based Lumin Financial. The deals add about $375 million in AUM to Perigon’s roster and is the second growth announcement by the firm in recent weeks. Perigon announced it had acquired Prudeo Partners, an RIA with $425 million in AUM, on February 14.
MAI Capital Management, a $20.8 billion RIA based in Cleveland, announced it had acquired Basking Ridge, New Jersey–based LWS Wealth Advisors. The deal added $562 million to the firm’s AUM. MAI said it is the company’s fourth acquisition this year and its 36th since 2018.
Mercer Global Advisors, the massive Denver-based RIA that has $56 billion in AUM and is backed by private equity firms Oak Hill Capital, Genstar Capital, and Altas Partners, announced its acquisition of Seattle-based MDK Private Wealth Management. MDK, which was founded in 2020 and focuses on ultra-high-net-worth clients, brings more than $2.5 billion in client assets to Mercer.
Newport Beach, California–based Beacon Pointe Advisors, another giant RIA, with more than $30 billion in AUM, announced it had acquired Columbia, Maryland–based Keeney Financial Group. The acquisition — the firm’s first in the mid-Atlantic region — brings $560 million in assets to Beacon Pointe. Private equity firm KKR became a minority investor in Beacon Pointe Advisors in 2021.
In its second-ever acquisition, Chicago-based F2 Strategy, a wealthtech consulting and research firm, announced that it had purchased St. Louis–based boutique marketing agency SKY Marketing Consultants. A company representative said in an email to RIA Intel that the firm was motivated in part by marketing industry forecasts that predict the industry will see a large increase in revenue generated by marketing technology. F2 bought Oakbrook Solutions, a wealth management consulting firm that serves banks, RIAs, custodians, and family offices, last year.
The RIA industry has seen record growth since 2020. Despite a slight slowdown last year, interest in acquiring RIAs remains far above pre-pandemic levels. According to DeVoe’s most recent RIA M&A forecast, 65 percent of RIAs said they plan on making an acquisition in the next two years, an 11 percentage point increase compared with 2022 and the highest percentage in four years.
