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NFP Buys Bronfman Rothschild, Betting Big on RIA Growth

15:27 27 March in In the News by rafferty

March 26, 2019 by Janet Levaux, ThinkAdvisor The news comes three years after NFP moved to sell its advisory brokerage business -- with 1,400 advisors -- to Stone Point Capital. Insurance broker NFP says it is buying Bronfman Rothschild, a $6 billion RIA that it plans to merge with its wealth manager Sontag Advisory. The combined firm should have over $10 billion in assets and potentially more than 55 advisors. The news comes three years after NFP moved to sell its brokerage advisory business — which had 1,400 affiliated advisors — to Stone Point Capital (who renamed it Kestra Financial) and is yet another sign that the industry is betting that growth in the RIA channel will top that of brokerage firms going forward. By 2020, the RIA segment — which includes about 650 firms...

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Tampa-Based IBD to Absorb Zombie Firm

16:38 21 March in In the News by rafferty

March 20, 2019 By Diana Britton, WealthManagement Calton & Associates has filed for an asset purchase of accounts that choose to come over from Capital Financial Services, which has some compliance baggage. Capital Financial Services, a small independent broker/dealer in Minot, N.D., will shut down its b/d operations, and its some 100 reps will be absorbed by Tampa, Fla.-based Calton & Associates, a midsize IBD that has done similar asset purchases in the past. President Dwayne Calton confirmed his firm has filed with regulators to pursue an asset purchase of customer accounts at CFS that choose to come over. He said they would like to keep the firm’s North Dakota back-office operations intact, depending on how many reps eventually switch. The deal is pending regulatory approval, but Calton is not acquiring the broker/dealer, which has had...

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HD Vest Parent to Acquire 1st Global

16:19 19 March in In the News by rafferty

March 19, 2019 By Janet Levaux, ThinkAdvisor The deal unites tax-minded advisors and could create an IBD with 4,500 reps and $60 billion in assets. Less than a month ahead of Tax Day, two tax-focused independent broker-dealers are coming together. Blucora — the parent company of the IBD H.D. Vest and the software maker TaxAct — is buying 1st Global for about $180 million in stock. Both are based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. With 1st Global’s 850 advisors and $18 billion in client assets, the combined entity should have close to 4,500 advisors and $60 billion in total assets, Blucora says. The deal comes about 3 1/2 years after Blucora announced plans to buy HD Vest, which had 4,500 FAs with $36 billion in assets at the time. Last week, 1st Global released the results...

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Nuisance Fines are Hurting Small B-Ds and Driving Consolidation, Warn Experts

19:09 11 March in In the News by rafferty

March 11, 2019 By Mrinalini Krishna, Financial Advisor IQ Regulatory and compliance asks are hurting smaller broker-dealers — typically those with fewer than 100-150 representatives — and forcing some of them to roll up into larger firms, warns Frank LaRosa, founder and CEO of Moorestown, N.J.-based Elite Consulting Partners. “Smaller broker-dealers are being strangled with the increased burden of Finra oversight. And both Finra and the SEC are coming down with more and more penalties for nuisance issues, which is really squeezing broker-dealers essentially out of the business. And what they're doing is they're rolling up,” LaRosa says. LaRosa says his team worked on several transactions last year and is currently working on a few such deals. While LaRosa is not saying regulators are going after small broker-dealers in particular, he does say the scale...