Carson Group made its 17th deal of 2025 by acquiring an Akron, Ohio-based registered investment advisor that separated from Morgan Stanley in 2017.
Wells Trecaso Financial Group, which has about $570 million of assets under management, is now a wholly owned office of Carson Wealth. Founders Douglas Wells and Ralph Trecaso are now managing partners and wealth advisors.
The deal brings to Carson two established and two junior advisors, including Ralph’s son, Samuel, and an established presence in Carson’s first office in Ohio.
Those are desirable traits for an active acquirer like Carson. But according to the dealmakers, a dinner at The Committee Chophouse in Omaha, Neb., where Carson is headquartered, helped seal the deal.
“Over 20-something years in this business, I’ve been to a lot of business dinners,” said Michael Belluomini, senior vice president of M&A at Carson Group. “That was one of the most enjoyable, by far, I have ever been to.”
“Cultural fit” is an overworn phrase in the RIA deal space. But in a business driven by founders who—like Wells and Trecaso—have often broken away from well-known financial firms to escape large, potentially restrictive environments, first impressions matter, said John Orsini, the director at Marshberry, recently acquired by Lincoln Financial, who made the match between client Wells Trecaso and Carson.
“In this process, I think we’d boiled it down to about seven-ish firms, and they all checked some boxes,” Orsini said. As the dealmaker, “you try to get to the center of a bullseye to the best of your ability, but you don’t know what that bullseye is, really, until you start to have those conversations.”
Orsini said it was the “family environment” feel that Carson gave when Wells and Trecaso visited the office. During the dinner, the teams discussed their approach to clients, their thoughts on succession and their personal lives, which Orsini said helped make it “clear this was the firm for them.”
Of course, money matters. But in the red-hot deal market for RIAs, Orsini said the bids under consideration will generally be in a similar range, with other details taking precedence.
“The money takes care of itself,” Orsini said. “Once they understand how they are going to be valued, and they start seeing the offers, then it becomes about everything else.”
Everything else, however, can get into the weeds. Belluomini said Trecaso was extremely detail-oriented and dug into Carson’s processes, including the minute procedures around repapering clients.
“I get it,” Belluomini said, noting the duo’s wirehouse background. “They had limited access to data, and being able to have those proactive conversations with clients just wasn’t in the cards for them in the wirehouse. … It involved multiple conversations and follow-ups with our COO to make sure that he understood when [the repapering] took place, what could be shared, and when the Docusigns were going to go out.”
Wells and Trecaso are Akron natives who have been working together since 1992. After leaving Morgan Stanley, they added partners and wealth advisors Christopher Walters and Samuel Trecaso and operations managers Michelle Weaver and Andrea Otte.
The Carson move “allows us to continue our legacy, strengthen our business continuity plans and ensure that our clients’ children and grandchildren will be just as well-served in the future,” Wells said in a statement.
Belluomini said that having junior advisors on the team helped Carson decide.
“It was an immediate box that was checked for us,” he said, noting both the two younger advisors and interest from one of the two operations staff who had expressed a desire to become a financial advisor. “We now have people that can run an enterprise once Ralph and Doug do decide to maybe slow down or start enjoying a little bit more of the leisure time.”
Orsini also said Samuel Trecaso had discussions about the mega-RIA’s investment processes and the marketing support he would get for business development.
There were also discussions with the full practice around Carson’s private client capabilities, such as tax preparation, family planning and insurance. Belluomini said the firm does not focus on the upper-high-net-worth market but wants the ability to do so as it expands its client base.
Earlier this year, Carson launched a division focused on clients with $10 million or more in assets.
The RIA has about $48 billion in AUM, and Wells Trecaso is its 31st wholly owned office.
“We didn’t even talk about the steakhouse they took us to in Akron,” Belluomini said. “We need to have a whole other call just about that.”
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