$29B Lido Advisors expands in Utah with Olympus Wealth Management

Lido Advisors is taking another step on its expansion strategy through a partnership with a fee-only RIA based in Cottonwood Heights, Utah.

Lido announced it will partner with Olympus Wealth Management on Tuesday, effectively growing its national footprint to 40 offices.

The deal also adds more than $850 million in regulatory assets under management from Olympus, which serves high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth business owners and families.

Olympus, founded by Scott Poelman, Scott Bird, and Matt Krull, will retain its team and location in the Salt Lake City metro area. The office will become a key site for Lido, which is headquartered in Los Angeles and manages over $29 billion in assets.

Krull, the most experienced among the trio, has 17 years of industry experience including five years at JPMorgan, according to his public investment adviser record with the SEC.

Olympus’s services include comprehensive wealth management and multi-family office offerings, positioning its advisors as chief financial officers for client families.

“Olympus was founded by three partners who have spent their entire careers helping clients organize, maximize, and protect their financial lives and legacies so that they can continue focusing on their businesses and passions,” Ken Stern, president of Lido, said Tuesday.

“Strategic insight and tailored solutions are at the core of how we help clients unlock the full potential of their wealth,” said Poelman, Bird, and Krull in a joint statement. “We’re excited to collaborate on delivering meaningful, measurable value that gives our clients the freedom to focus on what matters most to them.”

The partnership with Olympus builds on a series of recent developments for Lido Advisors. Earlier this year, the firm acquired Michigan-based Exchange Capital Management, marking its first deal since HPS Investment Partners – backed by BlackRock –took a majority stake in Lido.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, announced its acquisition of HPS in December last year. HPS invested in Lido in May, joining pre-exising private capital backer Charlesbank Capital Partners, which bought its stake in 2021.

With roughly $157 billion in AUM as of March 31, HPS is a global credit focused alternative investment firm, which makes it somewhat of an outlier in the largely private equity-dominated landscape of RIA consolidation nowadays. 

A new report from Cerulli gives a nod to the evolving diversity of options for RIA seeking capital support, highlighting the appeal of private credit and debt for growth-oriented firms. 

"Private credit is increasingly attractive to the RIA channels as a form of nondilutive capital," Cerulli said. "In addition, the cost of capital plays a role in an RIA’s decision to raise debt, and as interest rates fall, firms looking to retain control can do so while still accessing capital to grow."

Prior to HPS, Lido also expanded in the Southwest through its May partnership with Copperwynd Financial, a Scottsdale-based RIA managing more than $720 million in assets. That deal brought Lido additional offices in Arizona and Utah, as well as a team of multi-generational advisors.