Savant hooks up with The Monitor Group in rare RIA merger

Bigger is increasingly becoming better in the world of large registered investment advisory firms. The latest example of the trend: Last Wednesday, two sizable RIAs announced that they are merging. Combined, they will manage more than $2.5 billion in assets. Savant Capital Management, which has $2.05 billion in assets, and The Monitor Group Inc., with $461 million, said in a statement that the two will join for strategic advantage. Both are independent, fee-only RIAs. The new firm will be called Savant Capital LLC. The move puts Savant among the 50 largest RIAs in terms of total assets under management, according to InvestmentNews rankings. Although mergers-and-acquisitions activity among RIAs and wealth managers has been strong for more than a year, the great majority of such acquisitions have been done by private-equity managers or “roll-up” organizations. Combinations of two RIAs have been rare. “Each firm has successfully grown organically — one client at a time — during the course of the past several years. Joining forces provides a new avenue of growth for both our organizations, and we will continue to keep our strategic- growth options open,” said Thomas Muldowney, chairman of Savant Capital Management “Our combination is the culmination of a multiyear strategy to develop into a firm that will remain in existence for many years while maintaining its cutting-edge ap-proach to wealth management,” said Glenn Kautt, chairman and president of The Monitor Group. The firm will have 10 offices in four states: Florida, Illinois, Virginia and Wisconsin. Headquarters for the RIA will be in Rockford, Ill., where Savant Capital Management is based. Alone, Savant ranked as the 60th-largest fee-only RIA in the InvestmentNews RIA Data Center. The Monitor Group ranked as the 327th-largest fee-only RIA overall and the 10th-largest fee-only RIA in Virginia, the InvestmentNews data show. [email protected]