Merchant Investment Management, a New York-based private partnership that provides growth capital and other support to independent financial services firms, has taken a minority stake in Validus Capital, an El Segundo, Calif.-based registered investment advisor with about $2.5 billion in client assets, Merchant confirmed.
Validus was founded in February 2022 by John Krambeer, who spun a team out of Camden Capital, a multi-billion-dollar RIA he founded in 2004. Camden has since been rebranded as Certuity. Prior to Camden, Krambeer spent 16 years at Merrill Lynch, building the private banking and investment group.
Today, Validus has 14 employees and about 150 high-net-worth clients, according to an ADV filing. The firm also serves 10 pooled investment vehicles. The RIA uses Schwab and Fidelity for custody.
This follows news last week that Merchant invested in Meridian Wealth Management, a $4.2 billion RIA in Lexington, Ky., partly to help it add advisors and assets.
In addition to growth capital, Merchant will provide Meridian with resources and access to its network of independent advisory and financial services firms, which recently have included adjacent services to wealth management, such as trust and tax services.
Merchant has stakes in over 115 firms and RIA practices in six countries, collectively managing over $250 billion in assets. It has recently been investing in wealth management adjacent services such as trust, tax and accounting to offer those partnered services to its advisor network. In July, it also took a stake in a business valuation services firm that it said could provide services to RIAs’ business-owning clients. Earlier in the year, Merchant-backed Fin.Link, a platform for wealth managers, announced it was working with investment bank Republic Capital Group to offer advisors valuations of their practices.
Tim Bello, co-founder and managing partner at Merchant, said focusing on the broader financial ecosystem is part of Merchant’s evolution toward being a “lifecycle” investment partner providing long-duration capital through equity and credit. He said the setup differs from private equity investing in that Merchant is committed to longer time horizons and providing strategies and resources for businesses to weather market cycles.
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