M and A
Mercer's Latest Acquisition Boosts Southwest Presence
Mercer has been steadily bulking up through acquisitions.
Mercer Global Advisors, the Registered Investment Advisor, has bought Sage Future Financial, another RIA located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It manages about $100 million in assets under management.
The addition of Sage augments Mercer Advisors’ presence in the Southwest with three offices in Texas, and another in Arizona. The acquisition marks Mercer Advisors’ entrance into the New Mexico territory, and brings the firm’s total offices to 44, increasing Mercer Advisors’ total AuM to over $16.5 billion.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Sage was founded by Donna Skeels Cygan, who has over 20 years’ experience of delivering financial planning advice to her high net worth clientele.
Mercer has been steadily bulking up through acquisitions. In August, it bought Regent Wealth Management Group, a business with about $300 million of client assets. (The firm is located in Woodbridge, Connecticut.) In June, Mercer bought Jackson Financial Management, a firm based in Costa Mesa, California. That business has about $510 million of assets under management.
The purchase continues a trend of busy M&A activity in the US wealth management space, with regulatory pressures rising, client expectations and a need for scale driving some consolidation and repositioning of businesses. Recent data from M&A advisory firm ECHELON Partners showed brisk merger and acquisition activity in recent months.
Among recent deals to highlight the M&A trend, Texas-based Kestra Financial, the platform for wealth managers, recently launched Bluespring Wealth Partners, a new business focused on buying firms in the space. The move came a few weeks after Kestra itself became majority-owned by private equity house Warburg Pincus. At the start of August, TA Associates, the private equity business, acquired Wealth Enhancement Group, a firm that oversaw more than $11.8 billion in client assets as at the end of June. The private equity house bought the equity stake owned by funds affiliated with Lightyear Capital LLC, TA Associates and Wealth Enhancement Group.
