Mariner takes stake in RiverPoint

Mariner Wealth Advisors has acquired a majority stake in RiverPoint Capital Management, a Cincinnati-based wealth management firm with $1.3 billion under management. Terms were not disclosed. RiverPoint , which has a unit specifically catering to retiring Proctor & Gamble employees, will continue to operate under its own name. RiverPoint co-founders Valerie Newell and Leon Loewenstine will remain with the firm, along with 15 other staff. With RiverPoint, Leawood, Kan.-based Mariner Wealth now runs $5.6 billion for clients, with 104 professionals and staff in 13 offices nationwide. Holding company Mariner Holdings runs another $11 billion under its institutional money manager Montage Investments LLC, best known for its Tortoise MLP funds. The RiverPoint deal is the third this year for Mariner Wealth. In July, it took a majority stake in Orizon Investment Counsel LLC, an Omaha-based firm with $300 million in assets. In January, the firm acquired a majority interest in Adams Hall Asset Management of Tulsa, Okla., which had about $1.3 billion under management. Marty Bicknell, chief executive of Mariner Wealth, said he’s got another deal in the works, a firm with $600 to $700 million in assets, which should close in December. “Our whole objective is to find [and buy firms] where the leaders originally got into the business as practitioners, and woke up one day and said, ‘I’m running the business here and that’s not what I want to spend my time doing,’” Mr. Bicknell said. Mariner Wealth provides many administrative services to its acquired firms, he said, including human resources, technology, compliance, marketing and finance. The strategy is similar to roll-up firms, but “we don’t have an exit strategy,” Mr. Bicknell said. “We’re not buying other firms [to] sell or go public” later on.