Newport Beach, Calif.-based Beacon Pointe, a firm with $9 billion of assets under management, on Monday announced it was moving into the New York Tri-state area by purchasing Heller Wealth Advisors and adding it to its Beacon Pointe Wealth Advisors platform. Jordan Heller and Donald Hertling will be joining Beacon Pointe as partners.
Beacon Pointe was founded in 2002 by ex-Navy fighter pilot Garth Flint and his daughter, Shannon Eusey, the firm’s CEO. The original concept was to provide institutional product access to wealthy clients, but in 2011 founding partner and president Matt Cooper saw an opportunity to buy up small firms across the country. Those firms likely needed larger partners if they were going to grow, scale, handle back office chores and line up succession plans. The acquired firms are paid in Beacon Pointe stock.
Beacon Pointe Wealth Advisors focuses on high-net-worth individuals with more than $1 million in investable assets (though it has lower minimums to comply with custodian referral programs). The average client size was $4.4 million according to Financial Advisor’s 2018 RIA survey.
Heller’s culture fits that private-client bill, and also continues Beacon Pointe’s surge into the East Coast. One of the firm’s last big purchases was Philadelphia concern Walden Capital Advisors and its $130 million in AUM, a deal Beacon Pointe struck in 2017. Beacon Pointe has also moved into Boston, and a firm spokesperson says Washington, D.C., is on its radar.
Heller Wealth is overseen by Jordan Heller, whose résumé is littered with tiffany Wall Street names such as Salomon Brothers, CIBC Oppenheimer and Merrill Lynch, where he spent much of his time on real estate and real estate securities research. Heller Wealth spun off in 2008 from the Schonbraun McCann Group LLP, a real estate consulting firm.