He's been known for building up a wealth firm over two decades, then creating another and expanding it fast via M&A. And he's now launched a third business, but Peter Raimondi says client and partner needs come first.

The wealth management entrepreneur who founded his first business in the mid-1980s before creating another 12 years ago is now on his third move, and argues his track record proves he is the opposite of a short-term flipper of companies.

As reported a few days ago, Peter Raimondi has founded Dakota Wealth Management, a south Florida-based business with over $600 million of assets. The venture comes after he left Boston Private in 2016, the bank that had purchased his Banyan Partners business, a RIA that he had founded in 2006. He grew Banyan via a brisk series of M&A deals. 

Raimondi, a lawyer by training who says entrepreneurship is “in my blood”, said he hadn’t enjoyed the more institutional culture he found at Boston Private and relished the chance to be founding a new business again. And asked by Family Wealth Report if his business-forming track record was potentially at odds with serving clients over the long haul, Raimondi vehemently disagreed.

“I started my first business [Colony] when I was 30 and grew that over 20 years,” he said, noting that in the second half of its life, assets under management growth accelerated. However, it remained primarily an Executive Financial Planning firm. 

He decided to sell his interest in the firm, and relocate to southern Florida. Raimondi said he believed that area needed a new offering to what he had brought at Colony, so that led to the creation of Banyan. “I built something different, based entirely on customized investment management and wealth management,” he said in a call.

Over a relatively short period of time, that firm swelled through a series of RIA acquisitions, including notable names such as Silver Bridge Advisors of Boston. By the time Banyan was bought in July 2014, it held a total of $4.5 billion in AuM, of which about $3.5 billion came from acquisitions, the rest from organic growth. (This news service spoke to Raimondi back in 2014 about that deal.)

Boston Private’s purchase price – more than $60 million cash and stock deal – was too good to turn down, Raimondi said, as it equated to around 10 times earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization, and was close to three times annual revenues. “It was, I think, a very smart acquisition for Boston Private,” he said. “Four years later they [Boston Private] are happy with it,” he said. Raimondi, however, said he found the new environment at Boston Private not to his liking: “It did not work for me to be part of an institutional approach to investment management.” So Raimondi left in 2016, but he wasn’t interested in spending out his years on the golf course.

“Creating another firm is a pretty logical thing for me to do,” he continued.

The key to success, he said, is to “build a culture so that people really want to join”. He stressed the partnership structure of his Dakota business, and the fact that employees get to share in business growth. Only two weeks since its launch, Dakota has been able to name 14 partners, which speaks for itself, Raimondi said.

“At Dakota, there is no off-the-shelf model portfolio offering…it is fully customized and it is a labor-intensive process,” he said. 

The wealth industry has seen a flurry of wealth business launches and M&A activity in recent years, with demands for economies of scale in an increasingly regulated environment exerting pressure. Raimondi has built a reputation as a business creator and purchaser. It will be interesting to see how the third chapter of his career plays.