Savant Wealth targets Silicon Valley with Parkworth acquisition

RIA aggregator Savant Wealth Management continues to push an M&A strategy that targets advisors with clients in niche industries, announcing Tuesday it has acquired the Bay Area-based RIA Parkworth Wealth Management.

Parkworth caters its services to employees who work in Silicon Valley, having clients from companies such as Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and Google. The firm manages $216 million in client assets and will have its entire four-person team shift to Savant. Parkworth’s wealth managers Bruce Barton, Michal Zyla and Max Gonda will all become equity partners in Savant, which oversees roughly $33 billion AUM across 44 offices in 19 states. 

“Our vision is to have 10 to 12 different  deep dive niche expertises within the firm, so that we can serve the millionaire next door and function as a generalist,” Savant founder and CEO Brent Brodeski told InvestmentNews. “[Parkworth’s] expertise is really knowing not only how those [tech industry] people think, but as importantly around their options and their benefits and the compensation programs.”  

Parkworth marks the third announced M&A deal so far this year for Savant following its moves for the $1.2 billion Rhode Island-based RIA Corrigan Financial in May and Brent Kalka in June, who is a Chicago-area advisor with roughly $110 million client AUM. 

“We began our niche focus in 2021 by acquiring a firm that serves university professionals, and since then, we have added specializations to serve public company executives, high-net-worth women who are divorcing or are divorced, and care for aging family members,” Brodeski said.

Savant is backed by private equity firms Kelso & Company and The Cynosure Group. The firms own a combined equity stake of about 30% in Savant, said Brodeski, with employees owning most of the rest. 

“Our capital structure is unique in that as people retire, they can take exit ramps and redeem the rest of their equity, or if we ever sold the company someday everybody would participate pro rata,” said Brodeski. “Our typical new partner firm may roll 50% equity. Some have done 100% others have done 15% but I say it averages around 50% that that's rolled into equity. So essentially our new partners are becoming source capital.”

Alaris Acquisitions served as the M&A consultant for the deal between Parkworth and Savant. Parkworth has offices in Los Gatos, Palo Alto, and San Francisco. It marks the second California location for Savant after it acquired Kemp Financial Management based in Fullerton last year. “We've only barely tapped the surface here,” Brodeski said of the California market. 

“In California, there's more regulations and restrictions and rules than most states, [...] now that we're there, we're already investing in a lot of the compliance and legal elements of being in that market,” said Brodeski. "I'm certain more is coming, we already got other opportunities in the works. I’ve got my M&A team out there talking to other San Francisco area firms this week.”