Focus Financial gets a long-sought $400 million DFA RIA in Dallas -- with Adam Birenbaum's firm as the final added ingredient
Rudy Adolf's roll-up-like team used crerativity and persistence to get Jim Whiddon out for coffee; Matt Brinker at United Capital also closed a small deal but projects bigger revenue will come aboard soon
Related Moves
With RIA valuations ticking down and successions ticking up, Focus Financial deep sixes 'drunken sailor' pause, forgoes buyback plan and adds a CEO
CEO Rudy Adolf sees a 'softening' in multiples after a couple of frothy years when CI Financial dominated headlines and big RIA deals
August 13, 2022 at 12:39 AM
Looking past Covid-19 pandemic, Louisiana RIA buys $1-million building after hitting $1 billion in AUM and hiring the town's mayor
Summit Financial Wealth Advisors was sold to Focus Financial in 2014, growing its assets by $400 million since then but keeping staffing about the same
December 17, 2020 at 3:02 AM
Michael Kitces and Adam Birenbaum are now on the same $50-billion Buckingham team after the blogger called the young CEO with a multi-pronged proposal
Kitces is leaving Pinnacle - after 17 years - for fewer conflicts and more opportunity
March 12, 2020 at 1:45 PM
Marc Spilker adds Matt Brinker as chess piece -- and partner -- in what he calls a 'very selective' talent add to build platform-for-RIA platforms outside Wall Street
Merchant Investment Management's executive chairman wants good people good at their job and Brinker likes having a breakaway Goldman partner rather than one captive to the Wall Street giant.
January 15, 2020 at 2:42 AM
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United Capital Financial Advisers
RIA Welcoming Breakaways
Top Executive: Joe Duran
BAM Advisor Services
TAMP
Top Executive: Mont Levy
Stephen Winks
The independent convergence of these firms confirms to the same point confirms that the best merger/acquistion partners for RIAs and brokers interested in advice and professional standing are other RIAs who have scale, proven methodology, a powerful value proposition and control over their margins, not possible in a brokerage format.
In case no one is looking, all the inniovation is comming from the RIA space, while the brokerage format self selects to thwart any accountability and ongoing responsibility for broker recommendations.
It is no surprise the consumer prefers the advisor’s high value added, low cost, expert fiduciary counsel not available in any brokerage format to date.
This not the broker’s problem as it is simply the difference between broker/dealer administators and professionally managed RIAs. Advisors want to associate with firms that manage to a high fiduciary standard in the consumer’s best interest which maximizes their value proposition, margins and compensation. Brokerage firms do not acknowledge brokers render advice (it is against internal compliance protocol) and are administered in such a fashing so there is no broker control over their value proposition, cost structure, margins or professional standing—essentailly broker/dealer assurance no advice is being rendered to defend against unwanted fiduciary liability—thus crippling the broker.
It should not be a surprise that once large scale RIAs emerge, there will be little room for brokers unless they adapt and evolve in the consumer’s best intererst.
SCW
