Banyan adds Silver Bridge, more than doubling client assets

Banyan Partners LLC has agreed to acquire Silver Bridge Advisors LLC, a wealth management firm majority owned by the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP that has $2.2 billion in client assets. The deal, which marks the fifth acquisition in five years for Banyan, will more than double the firm’s assets under management to $3.4 billion.
Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in August, were not disclosed. The combined organization will be known as Banyan Partners.
Banyan chief executive Peter Raimondi will remain in that role at the combined firm, while Tom Manning, CEO of Silver Bridge, will become chief investment officer, and Michael Blackmon, Banyan’s current CIO, will become executive director of portfolio management.
Mr. Raimondi said he has plenty of capital to make more deals and would like to expand geographically to Southern California, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Dallas.
“We’ve had conversations with a number of firms in those cities,” he said. “If we find one with a high level of talent and the right synergy … we’ll go for it.”
Banyan could easily reach $10 billion in assets via acquisitions, Mr. Raimondi added.
“At that size, [you can] provide clients with the best possible infrastructure and investment” opportunities without compromising client service, Mr. Manning said.
Getting there might take some doing, though.
“Very few deals get done,” Mr. Raimondi said. “However good the fit, there’s always a lot of emotion and egos involved … The toughest part is to find a like-minded CEO.”
Silver Bridge adds greater wealth management functions to Banyan’s expertise in equities and options management, Mr. Raimondi said.
“Silver Bridge has such a strong family office presence [that] it really dovetailed beautifully with what we lacked,” he said.
Mr. Manning said Silver Bridge, which has $2.2 billion in client assets, was not large enough to be a core business at the law firm. The deal is Banyan’s biggest since Mr. Raimondi formed the firm in 2008.
Until the Silver Bridge deal, Banyan’s acquisitions have been self-financed from money Mr. Raimondi earned from his sale of The Colony Group in 2006, a firm he founded a decade earlier. Colony later became a partner firm of Focus Financial Partners LLC.
Some of the financing for Silver Bridge was from capital raised in January from Temperance Partners, a private investment firm, which took a minority stake in Banyan, Mr. Raimondi said.
Silver Bridge was the first acquisition overseen by Scott Dell’Orfano, Banyan’s chief strategic officer, who heads the firm’s acquisition team. Mr. Dell’Orfano was a marquee hire for Mr. Raimondi when he joined Banyan in January, after an eight-year tenure as executive vice president at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services.
Five Silver Bridge employees will leave the company and 32 will join Banyan, Mr. Raimondi said.
When the transaction closes, Banyan will have 70 employees in eight locations around the U.S., the firms said. Banyan, which is based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., has offices in New York, Boston, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth, plus two other Florida locations in Naples and Coral Gables. Silver Bridge adds a San Francisco office to the list.

Related Topics: Wealth Management