Mercer Advisors Spins M&A Carousel With Another Deal

Tom Burroughes

6 November 2018

Mercer Advisors, the US-registered investment advisor, has bought Beacon Wealth Management, increasing the former's total offices to more than 30 and adding $230 million in assets. The deal will increase Mercer's assets under management to more than $13 billion.

The deal is one of a number of merger and acquisition transactions taking place in the North American wealth industry, amid higher regulatory costs and client demands that have put a premium on scale. Another driver has been RIA owners of the Baby Boomer generation selling up ahead of retirement.

The deal brings in BWM's offices in Hackensack, New Jersey and Palm Beach, Florida. Financial terms were not disclosed.

BWM was founded in 2002 by founder and chief executive Mark Germain. He works with six staff members, and the team serve 170 clients and households.

"This acquisition further solidifies our presence in the Northeast," Dave Welling, chief executive of Mercer Advisors, said. "We are also excited to expand our presence in Florida which will join our growing presence in the Southeast alongside our Atlanta and Clearwater Florida offices," added Welling.

Mercer Advisors, based in Denver, was founded in 1985 and is the parent of Mercer Global Advisors. In February, the business bought Florida-based GFS.

There have been a number of recent M&A deals across the US. To give a few cases, San Rafael, Marin County-based wealth management firm, Private Ocean, bought Mosaic Financial Partners, a San Francisco-based registered investment advisory firm. Mosaic has $620 million in assets under management as of the end of August. Another transaction saw iCapital Network, a financial technology investments platform, buy Bank of America’s alternative investment feeder fund operations businesses, which represents about $20 billion in client assets. The US wealth management house CAPTRUST Financial Advisors bought a North Carolina-based wealth firm with about $400 million in AuM, its thirtieth deal since 2006, taking total AuA to $278 billion. One of the more eye-catching deals saw UBS shut the UK robo-advisory service, UBS SmartWealth, which was launched in 2016, and sell the technology to US digital wealth manager SigFig.