Focus Financial names Birenbaum as next CEO in succession move

Focus Financial Partners is moving ahead with a long-planned leadership handoff, naming Adam Birenbaum as its next chief executive as the firm continues to push scale and collaboration across its RIA network.

Birenbaum will become CEO and join the mega-RIA's board on February 1, succeeding Michael Nathanson, who will shift to chairman and remain on the board.

Nathanson was elevated to the CEO role in April last year, succeeding Dan Glaser.

In a statement published Friday, Glaser said the shift in leadership follows “the thoughtful succession plan we have long envisioned," lauding Birenbaum as “the right leader to build on the foundation Michael set."

Glaser is an operating partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which took a majority stake in Focus as part of a take-private deal that completed in 2023.

“As a public company, at least the experience for Focus was there was generally a limitation on the ability to utilize leverage. And when leverage levels went too high for the public markets, the public markets pushed the stock price down, and that was a constraint on a firm that was very much involved in regular acquisitive activity,” Nathanson said of Focus's experience as a listed entity in an interview with InvestmentNews.

“In the private markets, Focus maintains an excellent discipline around leverage," he said. "We will not allow our leverage to go too high, but we're less constrained because we don't have to worry about the public markets.”

The transition to Birenbaum as CEO is part of a broader succession plan Nathanson developed with the company’s directors as they mapped out Focus’ long-term growth strategy.

Birenbaum currently serves as president of Focus Financial, a position he took on in April this year. He is also CEO of Focus Partners Wealth, one of the five major hubs Focus established as part of a long-drawn intra-network consolidation strategy last year.

Focus Partners Wealth was formed in May 2024 via the combination of two large Focus partner firms, The Colony Group and Buckingham Strategic Wealth. Nathanson was the CEO of the Colony Group, while Birenbaum was chairman and CEO at Buckingham.

As Focus' chief executive, Birenbaum will oversee the firm’s strategic priorities, including efforts to deepen collaboration among partner firms and further consolidate capabilities and services across the platform.

Focus says its partner firms collectively advise on more than $520 billion in client assets, giving the organization considerable scale in an increasingly competitive landscape for RIAs and multi-family offices. The company has positioned that scale as a way to expand service offerings and specialization for advisors and their clients.

Nathanson framed the move as a handoff from a period of foundation-building to a new phase of growth. 

“It has been an honor to serve as CEO, and I look forward to supporting this transition and continuing to contribute to our mission in my new role as Chairman,” he said.