Private equity firm Lovell Minnick Partners is taking a majority stake in Americana Partners, an $8.5 billion Houston-based firm (and member of the Dynasty Financial Partners network). LMP will be the first owner of the firm outside of its founders and management team.
In a statement about the deal, Americana CEO Jason Fertitta called it “an important milestone” for the firm, with LMP and Americana sharing a “common vision” of what they want to achieve for customers.
“We chose to work with LMP because of their extensive history of accelerating growth for successful wealth management organizations, their deep pool of resources to support strategic acquisitions and their fundamental philosophy as partners and investors, Fertitta said.
Americana's management team and employees will remain significant owners, while Fertitta and the rest of the management team will continue to run the firm after the deal.
A group of breakaway advisors from Morgan Stanley founded Americana in 2019, making it the largest team to join Dynasty up to that point. The group started with seven advisors in three offices in Texas.
Since then, the firm has continued to attract talent (including some big names from Morgan Stanley). The firm offers wealth advice and family office services (with experience in alts and traditional investment strategies). Americana works with high net worth and very high net worth clients nationwide and recently opened a new division in Houston focusing on customers in Latin America.
LMP works primarily with high-growth, mid-market technology services and companies, with a particular focus on financial and business services and fintech firms. Founded in 1999, LMP has raised over $5 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 50 unique platform companies (and completed more than 200 additional acquisitions).
Current holdings include Pathstone, OneZero Financial and STP Investment Services (previous investments the firm has made include Mercer Advisors, Foreside and AssetMark, among others). LMP bought a majority stake in Pathstone in 2019 and helped the firm grow $7 billion in assets under management in the first year. Since the LMP deal, it has grown from $15 billion to nearly $100 billion in assets earlier this year.
“Our investments are partnerships and we are aligned with the high growth strategic vision of the Americana team,” said Lovell Minnick Partners partner Trevor Rich.
Piper Sandler & Co. acted as exclusive financial advisor to Americana on the deal, while Winstead and Alston & Bird served as legal advisors to Americana and LMP, respectively.