Private equity investor Oak Hill Capital is taking over a minority stake in wealth management platform Kestra Holdings, previously held by private equity firm Stone Point Capital, according to an announcement Friday.
Stone Point took a majority position in 2016 and sold most of it three years later to Warburg Pincus, which will remain majority owner. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The longstanding relationship with Warburg Pincus, and the addition of Oak Hill Capital, allows us to continue to scale our platform, invest in our team and bring new capabilities to financial professionals and the clients they serve,” Kestra CEO James Poer said in a statement, crediting Stone Point for aiding the platform’s growth over the last six years.
Founded in 1997, Kestra companies, which include a trust company, RIAs, broker/dealers and investment firms, currently oversee $122 billion in assets under administration through more than 2,400 financial professionals nationwide. Kestra’s acquisitive arm, Bluespring Wealth Partners, has onboarded 26 wealth management firms since launching in 2019 and brought in Fidelity Institutional’s David Canter to lead the firm earlier this year.
In 2022 alone, Kestra Financial and Kestra Private Wealth Services have added more than 50 financial professionals and more than $4 billion in new assets. The company also launched Kestra Investment Management to provide portfolio management services through its various companies.
“James and his team have built a terrific business in the wealth ecosystem with a compelling value proposition,” said Nico Theofanidis, a principal at Oak Hill, which entered the independent wealth management space in 2019 when it took a stake in Mercer Advisors.
In 2020, Oak Hill established Galway Insurance Holdings with private equity firm The Carlyle Group, which now has a majority interest in MAI Capital Management, a Cleveland-based RIA aggregator with more than $14 billion in client assets.
“We are excited to partner with both Kestra and Warburg and look forward to helping the platform accelerate,” said Theofanidis.