A wealth management M&A combination that has been agreed will see a relatively chunky-AuM new entity take shape.

The wealth management carousel continues to spin. 

Tiedemann Wealth Management, a New York-based wealth advisor with about $12 billion in assets under advisement, has agreed to buy Seattle-headquartered Threshold Group, a wealth-advisory firm and family office with $3.4 billion in assets under management.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed in a report on Tiedemann’s website. Media reports also did not state what was paid. 

The acquirer is a year younger than Threshold (founded in 1998 by George and Jane Russell they sold the global investment services firm known as Russell Investments). Tiedemann was founded in 1999 by Carl Tiedemann, the former president of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

Reports said the transaction is expected to close in December this year.

Tiedemann Wealth Management is a RIA and has offices in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Palm Beach, Washington, DC and Wilmington, DE.

Among recent M&A deals in wealth management are those of Associated Banc-Corp, which earlier in October agreed to acquire Whitnell & Co, a wealth management and multi-family office services firm based in Oak Brook, Illinois. The transaction is due to complete in November. California-headquartered Mercer Advisors, meanwhile, acquired a financial planning and investments firm, Ray Mignone Associates, with $290 million of assets under management. In September, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce completed its acquisition of a Chicago-based private wealth management firm, Geneva Advisors.

Consolidation and M&A are driven by forces such as a need for economies of scale in an increasingly regulated sector, with demands from clients for more digital and sophisticated offerings also requiring more scale. Such a trend has been visible among RIAs, for example. 

To capture such trends, ECHELON Partners, US-based investment bank for the wealth and investment management industry, in June this year launched RIA Group, a new entity designed to manage businesses focused specifically on the registered investment advisor industry.