Mercer Global Advisors has announced the acquisition of HYA Advisors, a Missouri-based registered investment advisor and broker/dealer with $1.2 billion in assets under management and advisement across approximately 1,000 clients.
Headquartered in Springfield, Mo., HYA Advisors — and its affiliated b/d, Heim, Young and Associates — is currently led by president and CEO Brent Singleton along with partner/principals Mike Sharp, Jeff Bilberry and Holly Gray, all of whom will be joining Mercer Advisors as equity owners.
“My partners and I were at a place where the business had grown substantially, and we knew we could benefit from having the expertise of a larger firm to help take us to the next level,” Singleton said in a statement announcing the merger. “We also knew that we wanted to expand the financial planning services available to our clients.”
Mercer has been one of several rapidly growing firms actively pursuing M&A deals over the past few years. It's announced six new acquisitions already in 2022, two of which closed on the last day of 2021, adding to 10 acquisitions earlier last year and 13 in 2020. This latest deal represents its second acquisition in Missouri this year, and its third in the Midwest, where advisory firms are gaining business in the aftermath of the global pandemic thanks to remote workers moving away from coastal business centers and an increased interest in financial advice, according to industry observers.
“We were impressed with the team at HYA,” said former Mercer CEO and current head of M&A David Barton. “And knew we could help them continue to grow their business but do so with the infrastructure and scale of a national platform RIA like Mercer Advisors that freed them up to do what they do best, serving existing clients and winning new ones.”
Mercer will open a new location in Springfield, where CEO Dave Welling said HYA Partners has already “built a great business.”
“We look forward to working together to deliver meaningful results for our shared clients,” he said.
Majority owned by both Oak Hill Capital and Genstar Capital and headquartered in Denver, Mercer is among the largest RIA and financial planning firms in the U.S., claiming more than $38 billion in client assets — including affiliates and wholly owned subsidiaries — as of March 30, 2022.