Wealth Firm Aggregator Gets $50M Cash Infusion

(Dow Jones) Focus Financial Partners, an aggregator of wealth-management firms, has received an additional infusion of $50 million in capital and stretched its line of credit with a consortium of seven banks by another $30 million.

The New York company said it will use the cash and credit to fund more acquisitions in a bid to establish a national network of own-brand investment-advisory firms and to help existing affiliates grow, particularly through adviser hires and affiliate-level acquisitions.

"This funding provides us with the additional firepower we need to further accelerate our growth," said Focus's founder and chief executive, Ruediger Adolf, in a statement.

Focus's initial backer, Summit Partners, has added $15 million in the latest round of funding. Polaris Venture Partners is contributing $35 million, the same amount Summit invested just prior to Focus's early-2006 launch.

Focus's credit consortium is led by Bank of America Corp. (BAC), the lead arranger since 2007. Focus declines to say what its total credit facility amounts to, but a recent report in Investment News said it owed $110 million prior to its new arrangement.

The company is completing its first acquisition in over a year, of New York-based Joel Isaacson & Co., which advises on around $3.5 billion in assets. Focus, a holding company, has stakes in 18 firms with 600 employees and $31 billion under management.

Kevin Mohan, managing director of Boston-based Summit, said its long involvement with Focus gives it confidence in the registered-investment-adviser aggregator's ability to thrive "in both good markets and volatile markets."

Said Alan Spoon, Polaris general partner: "The Focus partnership is delivering precisely what clients are looking for: high-quality, independent investment advice and an exceptional client experience."

Summit has raised more than $11 billion in private equity and venture capital since it was founded in 1984. Founded in 1996, Polaris of Waltham, Mass., has investments in more than 100 companies and more than $3 billion under management.

Late last year, Focus debuted a consulting program called Focus Connections to help big-book wirehouse teams establish RIAs, and to groom them as potential affiliates. To date it has had one taker, LLBH Private Wealth Management, a Westport, Conn., firm whose principals had been Merrill Lynch brokers.

Other companies in the wealth firm aggregation game include Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc. (BPFH) and WealthTrust LLC. Firms like insurance brokerage holding company National Financial Partners Corp. (NFP) and asset-manager networks such as Affiliated Managers Group Inc. (AMG), Asset Management Finance LLC and City National Corp.'s (CYN) Convergent Capital Management have similar models even where wealth management is less than central to their missions.

Prior to the financial crisis, some observers cast financial firm rollups as emerging powerhouses of the financial service industry. Now though, thanks largely to National Financial Partners' stock valuation, which has been battered, and Boston Private's property loan woes, some see them as a bull market fad.

Focus's acquisitions chief Rajini Kodialam said there is a vital difference between it and other firms with which it is broadly categorized: Unlike National Financial Partners, which houses "nonrecurring insurance-focused firms," Focus works exclusively with "recurring-fee-based wealth-management focused firms." And unlike Boston Private, Focus maintains no lending practices. National Financial Partners' stock price is about 85% off its early 2006 high; Boston Private's stock is down by about the same rate since early 2006.

Pure-play aggregators of retail RIAs like Focus and Nashville-based WealthTrust operate in a market with about $1.36 trillion in client assets across 14,500 firms, according to the market research firm Cerulli Associates.