Creative Planning adds $400 million New York City-based RIA

Creative Planning has closed its 10th deal of the past few months with the acquisition of The Doman Group, a New York City-based registered investment adviser with $400 million under management.

Peter Mallouk, chief executive of Overland Park, Kansas-based Creative Planning, said the deal adds to its New York metropolitan area footprint and also represents the aggregator’s first office in Manhattan.

“With The Doman Group, we are adding one of the nation’s leading firms that services the unique needs of younger high-net-worth clients, such as business owners, technology entrepreneurs, entertainers and professional athletes,” he said.

TDG is focused exclusively on high- and ultra-high-net-worth households of executives and business owners, with a specialty service for professional athletes and entertainers.

"I could not be more excited for this new partnership with Creative Planning,” TDG managing director Mark Doman said in a prepared statement.

“Peter and I have a shared vision, where financial planning should be the true north for clients’ decisions regarding their wealth management, estate planning, insurance, tax planning and other ancillary financial services,” Doman said. "With our ever-growing practice at TDG, we are thrilled to join forces with Creative Planning to further scale and expand our service offerings to our clients.”

The deal pushes Creative Planning’s total private advisory assets to approximately $100 billion and its retirement plan assets to $130 billion.

Mallouk said he expects the pace of consolidation in the wealth management space could start to slow after a year-end push to get deals done ahead of anticipated higher taxes.

Another factor keeping deal volume down, he added, is the stock market pullback, which lowers revenue at RIAs charging fees based on assets under management.

“Rates are going up and that could have a dampening effect, as well, because private equity is using significant leverage to do these deals,” Mallouk said. “Of course, all of that is more than offset by the fact the competitive landscape is changing and firms are saying to compete they have to do something more.”

In 2020, Creative Planning sold a minority ownership stake to private equity investor General Atlantic.