Mercer Advisors has announced another acquisition of a big-money wealth management team, its third with AUM of more than $1 billion in the last three months.
The Denver headquartered firm has acquired Family Wealth Planning Group and affiliate Family Wealth Tax Advisory in Naples, Florida. The team manages more than $1.2 billion in client assets for more than 200 families and is led by principal and founder Tom LaMacchio and principal and owner Nadia Keric.
With financial services industry experience spanning four decades, starting at State Street and then Merrill Lynch, LaMacchio founded the firm 22 years ago with Keric joining in 2012 from Accredited Investors having previously been with Thrivent as part of almost 20 years in wealth management.
The firm was previously with Raymond James and the team of nine, including its two principals, will remain with the firm.
“When we first met with Tom and Nadia, we saw a passion for client service like our own. We are excited to join the Family Wealth team in serving more clients in Southern Florida,” said Dave Welling, CEO of Mercer Advisors. “Their dedication to personalized, multigenerational wealth management also aligns with evolving client needs that we see across the country and prominently in Florida.”
Mercer Advisors recently made its third biggest acquisition ever with its acquisition of Full Sail Capital, an Oklahoma City-based RIA managing approximately $2 billion in assets for more than 600 families. Since then it has also added O’Brien Wealth Partners, a woman-owned and led RIA based in Waltham, Massachusetts, managing around $1.1 billion in assets.
The mega-RIA manages more than $72 billion in client assets and with 674 full-time employees that are ownership shareholders in the firm CEO Dave Welling says that Mercer has 'become the catalyst for employee ownership through M&A partnership.'
“You have employees that are acting like owners because they are, they’re coming into work every day feeling like they're building a better Mercer for our clients and the broader shareholder group,” Welling told InvestmentNews in June.
Mercer Advisors has added 99 partner firms since 2016 and Family Wealth marks the 20th women-led partner firm to join the firm, where women now make up nearly half of the client-facing team. But it’s not the easiest environment to make acquisitions, Mercer's principal of M&A partner development Martine Lellis told InvestmentNews earlier this year.
"It's probably the most competitive environment that we've ever seen," Lellis said. "When you have many well-capitalized buyers out there competing for what we consider high quality partner firms, then I think just maintaining the ability to be nimble in terms of the way that you structure these deals is incredibly important."
While industry statistics pointing to a succession crisis can cause alarm, advisor-owners should be free to consider a middle path between staying solo and catching the surging wave of M&A.
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