Mercer Advisors is acquiring Transitions Wealth Management, a Denver-based RIA with more than 400 clients and about $465 million in managed assets.
The acquisition is Mercer’s fourth office in Colorado, including its national headquarters, (in total, the firm has 83 offices around the country).
Transitions was founded in 1999 by a team of accountants, including Bruce Bendell and Gary Saltzman, who were later joined by Michelle R. Sandt-Wade and Michael Simmons. The firm helps clients with investment and savings strategies, as well as tax, insurance and estate planning and ensuring their charitable donations have a large effect.
Bendell said the firm had reached a point where it was at a crossroads in determining whether they would internally build out their infrastructure to expand further, or join with a larger firm that “had already successfully crossed that Rubicon.”
Transitions worked with the investment banker Advisor Growth Strategies as a transaction advisor, eventually settling on Mercer as an appropriate partner. Bendell said Vice Chairman David Barton helped seal the deal with a pitch framing Mercer as providing a “Mayo Clinic approach” to financial planning.
“That is exactly our business model and level of care that we provide to our local clientele, but Mercer Advisors does it on a national level,” Bendell said.
Mercer Advisors was founded in 1985 and currently has about 1,010 employees and more than $50 billion in total client assets.
Last year, the firm completed a significant revamp of its branding to mark its evolution in the past several years as a national firm (growing from $12 billion in AUM in 2017 to $50 billion today). The rebranding didn’t include a name change, but did include new brand guidelines, images, messaging and new colors.
Last June, Mercer brought on the Toronto- and New York-based Atlas Partners as its third private equity investor, which was expected to raise more than $1 billion in common equity and boost Mercer’s valuation above $3 billion. Atlas was expected to hold similar stakes to Genstar Capital and Oak Hill Partners, the firm’s other two private equity investors.
In one week last August, Mercer announced two major acquisitions totaling about $1.4 billion in client assets, including the $720 million San Diego-based Private Asset Management, as well as Steward Wealth Management, a 12-person team in the Dallas/Fort Worth area managing approximately $680 million.
Other Mercer acquisitions last summer included the Macon, Ga.-based Day & Ennis, with $400 million in assets, and Mallard Financial Partners, a $180 million firm based in Newark, Del.