The firm, based in Newport Beach, has made a number of deals at a busy time for M&A in the North American wealth management space.

California-based Beacon Pointe Advisors has wrapped up five new purchases of registered investment advisors, and officially closed a previously-announced investment from private equity titan KKR at the end of 2021. 

As a result of the new deals, Beacon Pointe closed 2021 with a total of 14 acquisitions, worth more than $7 billion in assets under management, up from four deals completed in 2020 for roughly $2 billion in AuM. It has expanded its footprint to new locations, including Tennessee and Wisconsin. The firm now has approximately $25 billion in assets under management and 33 offices nationwide, it said in a statement yesterday.

“We more than tripled our M&A efforts and we now have more than 70 incredibly engaged partners helping us [to] continue building a premier RIA with a laser focus on serving clients and putting their needs above all else,” Matt Cooper, president of Beacon Pointe Advisors, said.

The Newport Beach-based firm has made a number of deals at a busy time for M&A in the North American wealth management space. (See an example here.)

The deals, the financial terms of which were not disclosed, are as follows:

-- With $385 million in assets under management, Newport Wealth Strategies has joined forces with one of Beacon Pointe’s existing Newport Beach office locations. It makes this the fourth partnership for Beacon Pointe in the Newport Beach area, following the firm’s recent home turf merger announcement of Pacific Edge Advisors. Founder of NWS, Darin Simonian, is joining Beacon Pointe as a managing director and partner, alongside one other professional staff member.

-- The Retirement Planning Specialists is joining with $229 million in AuM. Located in Greenwood Village, Colorado in the Denver Tech Center, RPS will be Beacon Pointe’s second Colorado office. 

-- Located in Memphis, $441 million AuM Century Wealth Management will become Beacon Pointe’s first office in Tennessee. 

-- Milwaukee-based Next Generation Wealth Management has $563 million in AuM and will be Beacon Pointe’s first office in the state of Wisconsin. 

-- Southern Trust Financial Planning, with $405M in assets under management, will expand Beacon Pointe’s Florida footprint with offices in Sarasota and Bonita Springs.