Private equity exits surge 69%, but RIAs flex staying power

Exit values on private equity investments have surged 69.3%, while exit deal volume has increased 18.3% in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2024, according to a new report from financial services and advisory firm Cherry Bekaert.

The firm’s 2025 Private Equity Mid-Year Report analyzes PE deals across a broad spectrum of sectors — including technology, healthcare, industrials, manufacturing, and energy. Emily Blue, co-founder of the RIA M&A advisory firm Hue Partners, tells InvestmentNews that private equity firms invested in RIAs are bucking the broader PE trend of this year’s exit rebound. 

“One of the emerging themes we’re seeing is a strong desire to hold onto RIA investments longer. RIAs have proven to be exceptional assets, and private equity has a deep appreciation for their value,” Blue said. “Many PE firms are now structuring proposals that allow RIAs to roll equity into their next fund, extending the hold period.”

Fidelity says that RIAs accounted for 132 M&A transactions totaling $182.7 billion in assets in the first half of 2025, the most active mid-year performance since Fidelity began tracking in 2015. One of the most notable private equity exits for an RIA so far this year came in July, when Merit Financial announced their existing backers Wealth Partners Capital Group and HGGC’s Aspire Holdings were exiting upon Merit’s new investment from Constellation Wealth Capital. WPCG and Aspire had held minority stakes in Merit, a $20 billion RIA, since 2019.

“Just yesterday, we spoke with a leading PE firm reflecting on past RIA exits. They admitted that when they look at where those firms are performing today, they wish they had never sold,” said Blue, whose firm has advised on M&A deals involving mega-RIAs such as EP Wealth and Mercer.

“RIAs and wealth management firms continue to garner a lot of investment from private equity funds,” Scott Moss, financial services industry leader, partner at Cherry Bekaert Advisory, told InvestmentNews. “I think it's really centered around, just like the CPA firm business, generally speaking there's lots of fragmentation, a few dominant players, and the ability to do a platform deal and then add significant size and scale through add-on or subsequent roll up transactions.”

Boston-based private equity firm Parthenon Capital invested in Cherry Bekaert in 2022. Less than a year later, the Cherry Bekaert Wealth Management RIA with $1 billion in AUM was sold to Choreo, a wealth manager and RIA with over $27 billion in assets.

Earlier this month, president Donald Trump signed an executive order to permit private equity, real estate, cryptocurrency and other alternative assets to enter 401(k) retirement accounts. The move gives more Americans access to investments that have typically only been accessed by institutional investors, but critics point to private equity’s higher fees and illiquid nature as being potential risky investments for retirement accounts for everyday investors.  

“Opening up 401k to the individual investor and giving them access to private equity, I think that is going to continue to pour a lot of fuel on the private equity fire and build a lot of momentum,” said Moss. “We're sitting at record levels of dry powder right now, and I think this just continues to pile on that dry powder, and hopefully we start to see some reductions in interest rates here, maybe as early as September.”