Mercer Global Advisors, one of the nation’s largest and most acquisitive registered investment advisors with $77 billion in assets, has purchased Family Wealth Planning Group, a Naples, Fla.-based wealth management firm with $1.2 billion in client assets across about 200 families. The deal includes Family Wealth Tax Advisory, an affiliated tax practice that will be integrated into Mercer’s tax planning services.
“We provide tax services to our clients, so anytime we find an RIA that is doing the same thing, it makes it even more compatible,” said Martine Lellis, principal, M&A partner development, Mercer Advisors. “They are very financial planning-centric; they have an operating model that’s very similar to ours; they have the ability to do some tax services in-house, which brings on more talent and resources for us to leverage. And we can invest more to continue to expand those services for our clients in Florida.”
Family Wealth Planning Group has been affiliated with Raymond James Financial Services, its independent advisor channel, since 2016. It will continue to custody with Raymond James. Mercer has had some success recruiting Raymond James advisors; the RIA has several billion dollars custodied with the firm, Lellis said.
“We have had a lot of Raymond James firms interested in our business model, and that has allowed us to seamlessly onboard them and still maintain the custody at Raymond James,” she said.
Family Wealth Planning Group services high-net-worth families, business owners and executives. The firm is led by Founder and Principal Tom LaMacchio and Principal and Owner Nadia Keric. This makes it the 20th women-led partner firm to join Mercer.
“Mercer Advisors’ extensive resources, especially in tax, estate and investment planning, will help us increase our impact while preserving the long-term continuity of the business,” Keric said in a statement.
All nine team members will remain with the firm.
This represents Mercer’s third $1 billion-plus acquisition in as many months. In June, the RIA bought Full Sail Capital, an Oklahoma City RIA with about $2 billion in client assets. Last month, it added O’Brien Wealth Partners, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm with about $1.1 billion in client assets.
Overall, Family Wealth is Mercer’s ninth deal this year and 105th since launching its M&A strategy in 2016, with the acquisitions of Tufton Capital Management, a $810 million AUM RIA in Hunt Valley, Md., and Lewis Wealth Management, a Denver-based RIA with about $75 million in AUM. The firm surpassed 100 acquisitions in May.
Mercer also recently announced that more than half (674) of its 1,300 employees are now equity owners in the RIA. That’s up tenfold from 2018, when there were fewer than 70 employee shareholders.
Mercer is majority owned by Oak Hill Capital, Genstar Capital, Altas Partners and GIC, a global institutional investor.
#Mercer #Advisors #Acquires #1.2B #Raymond #James #Practice