LPL acquiring California broker-dealer with 260 advisors

LPL Financial, a firm with a long history of mergers and acquisitions, added to that Tuesday with an announcement that it was acquiring the wealth management business of Crown Capital Securities, an Orange County, California-based broker-dealer and registered investment advisor with 260 financial advisors and $6.5 billion in assets under its roof.

Terms of the deal, which is scheduled to close early in 2024, were not released.

“Since our inception in 1999, we have been focused on supporting our advisors so they have more time to develop customized and integrated investment and planning strategies and more time to spend with their clients, providing a best-in-class customer experience,” Darol Paulsen, CEO at Crown Capital, said in a statement. "LPL shares that philosophy."

Shares of LPL Financial Holdings Inc., the firm's holding company, closed trading Tuesday at $233.22.

LPL is one of the most notable buyers of broker-dealers in the financial advice industry, starting in 2005 when it was acquired by private equity managers and then continuing after its initial public offering in 2010.

In December 2020, LPL said it was acquiring the wealth management arm of the struggling Waddell & Reed Financial Inc., which encompassed 921 registered reps and financial advisers and $63 billion in client assets.

That was a few years after it bought National Planning Holdings Inc., an independent broker-dealer network with 3,200 advisers. LPL acquired National Planning Holdings for $325 million from Jackson National, an insurance company. NPH consisted of four broker-dealers whose advisors controlled $120 billion in client assets at the time.