Global Mercer advisers announced her The first major M&A deal in 2016When he joined the Houston -based Trust Kanalya, adding confidence services to Mercer's wealth management offers. Since then, RIA based in Denver has completed 100 agreements, with the Tufton Capital Management's purchases this week, a $ 810 million Aum Ria in Hunt Valley, MD., And Lewis Wealth Management, a Denver -based RIA with about $ 75 million in AUM.
Over the past nine years, Mercer has strengthened its country as one of the most active buyers in the industry, using “integration – not its collection” to attract potential partners. But CEO Dave Welling says the firm spent 30-plus years before this construction of its foundation, focusing on organic growth and centralizing certain functions.
“We had understood how to balance what resources to share and centralize and how to empower the local advisor, the local team to make choices in their local market and direct their strategy in the local market,” Welling said.
For example, the firm has strong teams of centration and strong tax planning. It also has investments that are centralized from an operational and management and decentralized perspective in the sense that councilors can adjust portfolios as needed.
“As we entered M&A in 2016, our integration approach, non -general, was quite new,” he said.
At the time, estimates Welling had only five or six buyers funded in the RIA market, most of whom were making pure gathering. Today, there are 40 to 50 buyers.
“Our integration approach, which has to do with how we can give the client more value, how we can offer more value and opportunity to the team that is joining us and how we can position better to grow organically, the idea of sharing resources, providing access to the teams we have already built, are large parts of why people make these decisions,” he said.
Today, Welling considers Mercer a national firm, with 110 offices across the country, clients in every country and $ 71 billion in total assets. There is a presence in 40 different markets.
About 40% of about 1,300 Mercer employees joined through M&A, and 620 of those employees, including customer councilors, are owners of the company.
Tufton's purchase expands Mercer trail in Washington, DC, Market, bringing it to $ 3 billion in client assets in the region. The firm, which was founded in 1995, is headed by owners Chad Meyer, President and Managing Partner; Scott Murphy, manager and portfolio partner; and Eric Schopf, portfolio manager, partner and director of research.
The addition of Lewis Asset Management expands the presence of Mercer in Colorado, where it has nearly 5.5 billion dollars in eight offices and more than 160 employees. RIA is run by Austin Lewis, a solo practitioner who provides financial planning for 40 clients.
Mercer has been building her M&A team for the past two years. Lately Employed Mother TedA former corporate and M&A partner at Potomac Law Group, as the Director of M&A Partner Development. It serves alongside Martine Lellis, who was promoted in the same role a year ago. This position was created by the need to handle the growing pipeline of the RIA purchase target firm. In October, Lellis also took over responsibilities from Dave Barton, Vice President of M&A at Mercer, who retired to focus on a continuing health issue.
At the beginning of last year, the firm Added five new drivers To complete its partner M&A development teams. These leaders were all tasked with strengthening the firm's inorganic growth strategies.
Mercer is owned by the majority by OAK Hill Capital, Genstar Capital and Partner.