Banyan Partners, the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., firm that earlier this year doubled its size by purchasing Boston’s Silver Bridge, the RIA business of law firm WilmerHale, has agreed to buy two more asset managers that will expand its national presence, add some $735 million to its AUM war chest (bringing its total AUM to just under $4 billion) and give Banyan a beachhead in institutional asset management.

Banyan will buy Rushmore Investment Advisors, a privately held global large-cap equity manager in Plano, Texas, outside Dallas, with some $635 million of directly managed assets, according to its last Form ADV. Banyan will also buy Holt-Smith Advisors, a Madison, Wis., equity shop with more than $100 million in AUM that caters mainly to wealthy clients. Both firms are employee owned.

The Florida firm, just an upstart compared with the firms it is devouring, having launched only five years ago, will have 85 employees and nine offices nationwide once the deals close. It has offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Atlanta, as well as four cities in Florida, including Miami.

Both firms will allow Banyan to expand its national footprint and offer distribution platforms for its proprietary products, as well as get the entrée into the institutional world, according to Peter J. Raimondi, Banyan’s founder and CEO. Banyan has expanded beyond its renowned covered-call and stock expertise with Silver Bridge’s bond shop and the expertise of its other acquisitions. And there are more firms being considered in the pipeline, he says.

With Rushmore, a firm run by John Vann, Banyan has snagged a global equity manager known for a proprietary quantitative screening process.

“Banyan has always been looking for an international alternative for our clients,” says Raimondi. “And it’s an international equity portfolio. So it has its own international equity manager who travels overseas, has his own team, is responsible for his own research and stock selection. … So it’s a custom equity portfolio on an international basis, which is really unique.”

Rushmore also has large-cap growth and large-cap income portfolios. The firm participates in wrap programs, according to filings, has some 400 clients and manages money for corporations, foundations, retirement plans, trusts and endowments. Raimondi says about a third to a half its assets are in institutional hands.

Holt-Smith offers proprietary equity strategies, and has a bench of large-cap value and midcap growth talent. Though the firm mostly handles wealthy clients, according to its ADV, about 10 percent of its clients are charities. It had 136 clients at the end of 2012, according to its ADV filing. Marilyn Holt-Smith, the firm’s sole owner, founded the firm in 1987.

“The firm was referred to us by TD Ameritrade, which is always nice,” says Raimondi. “It was a very deliberate sale for this person. She is making a big step being part of a larger firm.”

Rushmore and Holt-Smith are “largely owned by the founders, though equity is spread among some of the employees,” Raimondi says. Marilyn Holt-Smith will become a partner at Banyan, as will a few of the employees of Rushmore, including John Vann, the Dallas firm’s CEO.

Raimondi is on an acquisition tear, with more deals in the pipeline, one of the reasons he snagged Scott Dell’Orfano, a veteran of Fidelity, to come on board earlier this year to vet new RIA targets, which Dell’Orfano says the firm should be able to fund from profit (the firm turned to Canadian private investor Temperance Capital for the Silver Bridge purchase). Banyan has eschewed what it calls “lifestyle” firms whose owners are looking to phase out and cash out and instead wants still-engaged owners, people with the talent to close business on the large amount of referrals the firm is getting from custodians like TD Ameritrade and Fidelity for its investment expertise.

Both new firms “have both institutional and retail salespeople in place,” says Raimondi. “Even with Silver Bridge we had no institutional exposure,” he adds, “so it broadens Banyan out in the institutional marketplace in a way that allows us greater distribution for our products and services. It allows us to expand in ways we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to without changing the firm at all.”

Since 2008, Banyan has also acquired Oaktree Asset Management in New York; Weiss Capital Management in Palm Beach Gardens; Colonial Wealth Management in Boston; EMF Associates in Miami; and Boston’s Silver Bridge.