Jeff and Bruce pull back the curtain a bit this week on how private money finds its way into RIA businesses in the form of investments. Tim Bello from Merchant Investment Management joins to share his perspective as someone whose firm makes investments and forms partnerships mainly in the wealth management space. And no, this is not private equity.
Related Article: Fusion Family Wealth sells minority stake to Merchant
Related Article: Allworth Financial acquires $480 million RIA
Guest Bio:
At Merchant, Tim Bello is engaged across all aspects of the firm, with a day-to-day focus on driving the company’s key growth initiatives and directing the overall corporate strategy. Prior to Merchant, Tim was an early stage partner at Dynasty Financial Partners, where he was in charge of strategic implementation and advisor identification firmwide for the Dynasty Network. Prior to Dynasty, Tim was head of global platforms for New York-based alternative asset manager SkyBridge Capital, where he was in charge of building and managing the firm’s global platform sales activities.
Previous to SkyBridge, he was an original member of the Permal Group’s Hedge Fund of Fund US Private Client Platform distribution team, where he launched and developed the firm’s U.S. distribution arm and brand. Earlier, he worked on Permal’s institutional sales team, which involved interfacing with pensions, endowments, foundations and institutional consultants across the Permal product suite. Tim currently serves as special advisor to the Board for the Family Office Association in Greenwich, Conn., and is on the Membership Committee of the Core Club in New York. He is a graduate of St. Lawrence University.
Bruce and the IN staff talk about IPOs, Robinhood, AI and risk halfway through an eventful 2026 in the financial advice industry.
Bruce this week speaks with Mark Goldberg, who has worked as a senior executive with Royal Alliance Associates, now Osaic, Carey Financial and Griffin Capital Securities about the current market for alternative investments, including private loan and BDC funds.
Bruce Kelly talks to local Rhode Island reporter Eli Sherman about the former nontraded REIT czar, Nick Schorsch, and his group’s investments in beloved local eateries in the Ocean State.
Bruce Kelly speaks to longtime compliance expert Sander Ressler about elder fraud, artificial intelligence and GWG Holdings and what advisors and their broker-dealers and RIAs should be guarding against.
