CM Wealth, Perigon announce C-suite additions

Two RIAs unveiled changes to their C-suite Wednesday, with Ohio-based family office CM Wealth naming a new chief executive and San Francisco-headquartered Perigon Wealth Management welcoming a seasoned HR veteran for a new C-level position.

CM Wealth names Paul Bodnar as CEO

CM Wealth, an independent multi-family office operating across 19 locations, has promoted Paul Bodnar to chief executive officer and managing member.

Bodnar is taking over from R. Douglas McCreery, who led the firm for five years.

The move follows a succession plan that McCreery said began 10 years ago, when the firm started charting a course to remain independent and employee-owned. Bodnar, who joined in 2015, will also retain his role as chief investment officer.

McCreery said in a statement that Bodnar "has spent the last decade driving our strategic evolution and embodies the culture of discipline our clients expect," adding that the moment was right to pass leadership to someone "who has the vision to guide this firm for the next generation."

CM Wealth has resisted the consolidation wave reshaping much of the wealth management industry. At more than $2.1 billion, the RIA is sitting in the messy range of $500 million to $5 billion that Advisor Growth Strategies' most recent RIA Deal Room Report called "the vanishing middle."

"The abundance of [RIA M&A] activity put the middle market RIA ($500M-$5B AUM) firmly in the crosshairs," the report read. "Firms will be forced to either grow and scale, or be forced to sell to a larger platform."

Bodnar said the firm's employee-owned structure allows it to "ignore pressures of outside shareholders and focus entirely on the multi-generational objectives of our client families."

Read more: The real driver behind the RIA M&A boom is complexity, not scale, says AssetMark’s Maiuri

Before joining CM Wealth, Bodnar was a vice president at a sell-side equity research firm whose work earned recognition from The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.

Perigon hires first chief people officer

San Francisco-based Perigon Wealth Management, an RIA with approximately $11.2 billion in client assets as of Dec. 31, has named Rory Shusted as its chief people officer. Shusted, who is based in the Atlanta area, will report directly to CEO Arthur Ambarik.

The hire reflects Perigon's effort to build organizational infrastructure around a workforce that has grown through both organic expansion and acquisitions. Ambarik said "balancing continued growth with a strong employee culture has been central to our team's success, and bringing an experienced enterprise human resources executive on board represents a critical next step as we continue to grow thoughtfully."

Shusted brings senior leadership experience across public and private firms. Most recently she served as executive vice president of global talent at RGP, a publicly traded professional services firm, before founding her own HR consultancy. Earlier in her career she held senior executive roles at CarterBaldwin, a global search firm, and Larson-Juhl, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

Shusted said in the announcement that independent wealth management firms present "a unique challenge to build a meaningful and cohesive company culture, especially as they achieve scale."

The appointment is Perigon's second senior leadership addition this year. In a double-addition last month, the firm tapped Jon Seif as managing director of digital strategy and Luke Samuels as senior director of business development as part of a broad push to drive organic growth.