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January 22, 2021 By Tobias Salinger, FinancialPlanning.com A midsize wealth manager is boosting its annual revenue by 40% and its advisor headcount by 75% through its first major M&A deal. Arete Wealth agreed to purchase Nashville-based Center Street Securities, which has 112 advisors and $1.04 billion in total client assets, the firms said Jan. 15. Read the full article on FinancialPlanning.com....
January 20, 2021 By Diana Britton, WealthManagement.com Commonwealth’s new Business Consulting Services will provide dedicated transition support for advisors leaving the wirehouses to go independent. Waltham, Mass.–based independent broker/dealer Commonwealth Financial Network has introduced a new offering to help lure breakaway brokers out of the wirehouses. Business Consulting Services, as the firm calls it, will be a suite of offerings to provide a so-called “soft landing” for employee advisors as they transition into owning and running a business as an independent. While the firm has had a practice management function for many years, which does a lot of what’s required to transition to independence, this is a formal packaging, with dedicated resources for breakaway advisors, said Matt Chisholm, senior vice president, RIA services and practice management, at Commonwealth. Most of the functions are done...
January 13, 2021 By Diana Britton, WealthManagement.com The acquisition provides a succession plan for the founding partners of BAR, which has 300 advisors and $4 billion in assets under management. Cetera Advisor Networks announced Wednesday morning it has acquired one of its own super offices of supervisory jurisdiction (OSJ), or “regions” as the firm calls them—BAR Financial, which has 300 advisors, about 30 employees and $4 billion in assets under management. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The move provides a succession plan for BAR’s three founding partners, John Brackett, Eric A. Huck and Anthony Tarantino, who are near retirement age, and it provides a path forward for the firm’s advisors with as little disruption as possible. There will be no repapering involved, and BAR’s management team and support staff will remain in...
January 8, 2021 By Jeff Berman, ThinkAdvisor Credit agencies say these firms' debt loads weigh on their ratings. But the firms say it's a strategy they can manage. (The private equity firm Reverence Capital bought a 75% stake in Advisor Group in 2019.) Advisor Group Comfortable With Debt Level Advisor Group declined to specify how it financed the Ladenburg acquisition or comment on Henschen’s estimate of how much of its cash flow is used to service junk bonds. “As a private company we do not disclose or publicly discuss our financial statements,” Jamie Price, Advisor Group president and CEO, pointed out. Price also said: “Our management and board are comfortable with our leverage given our strong recurring cash flow and high cash position. We are benefiting from lower rates on our variable debt and we have a significant...