Wealth Enhancement adds $592M Chicago-area RIA

After an active month of dealmaking in July, Wealth Enhancement once again expanded its footprint this week as it scoops up another independent RIA firm in Illinois. 

The giant RIA has agreed to acquire Miramar Capital, an independent registered investment advisor based in Northbrook, Illinois, adding roughly $592 million in client assets and pushing the Minneapolis-based aggregator's total assets under management to approximately $159.4 billion, according to a company announcement. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Miramar Capital was founded in 2017 by Bob Kalman and Max Wasserman, who serve as the firm's senior portfolio managers and lead a dividend-growth investment strategy built around capital preservation and long-term compounding. The firm's client base spans wealthy individuals, business owners, corporate executives, multigenerational families, and institutional accounts including corporations and foundations.

Wealth Enhancement chief executive Jeff Dekko framed the deal as an extension of the firm's research-driven investment culture, noting that Kalman and Wasserman had guided clients through multiple market cycles while keeping their focus on long-range financial planning.

"By joining Wealth Enhancement, they'll continue delivering trusted guidance while giving clients access to a broader range of planning, tax, estate, and wealth management capabilities," Dekko said.

Jim Cahn, the firm's chief strategy officer, added that the acquisition strengthens the company's presence in the greater Chicago market.

The Miramar deal lands just days after Wealth Enhancement's entry into a new state via its acquisition of an Alabama-based advisory practice, a transaction that added roughly $462 million in client assets and gave the firm its first offices in Huntsville, Florence, and Gadsden. That practice, led by founder Don Cloud, built much of its client roster among professionals tied to the region's aerospace and defense sector.

The pace of dealmaking continues even as Wealth Enhancement navigates a far larger and more consequential process: its own potential sale. Carlyle and Bain Capital are reportedly the final bidders vying to acquire the company at a valuation of roughly $7 billion including debt, a deal that would rank among the largest ever struck in the registered investment advisor space. While the sale process run on behalf of current owners TA Associates and Onex by investment bank Evercore has been described as advanced, it's still not guaranteed to result in a transaction, and the owners could still elect to retain the business.

Wealth Enhancement's growth since TA Associates first acquired the firm in 2019, when it managed roughly $11.8 billion in client assets, has come almost entirely through acquisitions of independent advisory practices, a pattern common among private equity-backed platforms competing for market share against wirehouses and regional banks.

Beyond the Alabama and Illinois deals, the firm has recently absorbed two North Carolina practices representing nearly $1 billion in combined assets, along with two separate teams spun out of the 88-year-old New York firm Shufro Rose, together accounting for more than $1.3 billion in client assets.

That appetite for RIA platforms shows little sign of slowing industrywide, with deal volume setting a record in 2025 and this year's pace running close behind, driven by the durability of fee-based revenue tied to client assets under management.