Atria Wealth Solutions, a New York-based recent start-up acquirer of broker-dealers, announced Thursday that it has agreed to acquire Cadaret, Grant & Co., an established Syracuse, N.Y.-based independent broker-dealer.
Founded in 1985 by industry veteran Arthur Grant, Cadaret Grant is privately owned and has about 900 affiliated reps in 475 branches with $23 billion of assets under administration.
Grant, 75, will remain with the company in an advisory role for an undetermined time. “I imagine I will end up in retirement after the transition is totally set in place,” he said.
The main objective of selling the firm was to provide continuity, Grant stressed. “I’d been looking for a number of years for the future management [and] we found a firm [in Atria with] a terrific management team.”
Grant is the majority owner of Cadaret. Minority shareholder and chief financial officer Don Taylor will stay on, and chief compliance officer BJ Johnson, another shareholder, will be retiring.
Beyond that, “Cadaret Grant is not changing,” Grant said. “We’ll have the same name, the people, the location and the same clearing firm [Pershing]. It will be non-disruptive to advisors.”
The news of the sale has been “going over very smoothly” with advisors, Grant added. “They realized something had to happen.”
Backed by private equity firm Lee Equity Partners, Atria was formed last August by two Morgan Stanley vets: Doug Ketterer, Atria’s chief executive and former head of field management at Morgan Stanley, and Eugene Elias, who was head of client and advisor platforms at the wirehouse and who is now Atria’s chief operating officer. Kevin Beard, chief growth officer and the third founding partner, was formerly head of acquisition and recruiting strategy at AIG Advisor Group.
Beard, who has known Grant for many years, brought the two firms together.
Atria launched last summer with the purchase of two California broker-dealers, CUSO Financial Services, which serves credit unions, and Sorrento Pacific Financial, which works with banks and has a small independent B-D channel as well.