The acquisition momentum continues at United Capital Financial Advisors. Just two months after it announced the acquisition of three RIAs with $2.2 billion in combined assets, United Capital said today it has bought another practice, Vantage Point Advisors in the Philadelphia suburb of Lower Gwynedd, Pa., with $170 million in fee-based assets under management. United Capital, based in Newport Beach, Calif., has $13 billion in assets and 29 offices.
Vantage Point, now renamed United Capital Private Wealth Management, was founded in 1984 by attorney Terry J. Siman, a former Montgomery County prosecutor and past president and chairman of the Institute of Certified Financial Planners. About a third of the clientele are small business owners, Siman said. The practice has three wealth advisors and two relationship managers, and is adding a third relationship manager, he said. Siman had been looking for partners and found United Capital to be a good fit.
“I think I’m in a place where they’re headed. I’ve been a fee-only practitioner for over 25 years. I’ve been very comfortable, because of my attorney background, with a fiduciary capacity,” he said. “I think they’re interested in taking that concept on a national scale.”
Siman also said he believed United Capital could help him find partners who could help him build the business; he had always been the primary business development officer at the firm. He’s also looking seven to 10 years down the road. “It’s time for me to think about continuity,” said Siman, who turns 60 in May.
Siman says his training as a prosecutor helped him negotiate a good deal because he was able to be very objective about the practice he built. It’s not a quality that many advisors necessarily share, he says. “Most advisors have not really caught the wave of creating an enterprise where they are not essential,” Siman said. “Acquisitions have a cold, hard truth to them, and advisors are too passionately connected to their practices in most instances to understand that and make that work for both parties.”
United Capital CEO Joe Duran said the latest deal would strengthen his company. “As we continue to execute on our organic and strategic growth plans, it is teams of professionals like these that set the stage for growth in this new market for us,” he said in a statement.