Bellatore Financial Inc., a practice management services company aimed at financial institutions and independent advisors, said this week it acquired two companies that will help boost its offerings to the advisory market. Both deals were for undisclosed amounts.
Bellatore bought Advisor Partners LLC and Capital Allocation & Management Inc., making both of them wholly-owned subsidiaries of the San Jose, Calif.-based company. Advisor Partners is a separate account manager with roughly $350 million in assets under management and relationships with more than 40 financial advisory firms. Based in San Francisco, Advisor Partners specializes in building customized, actively-managed, index-based "core" equity separate accounts with an eye toward tax efficiency.
Advisor Partners co-founder Dennis Clark sees joining Bellatore as part of his company's growth strategy. "We thought their strategic plan offers us distribution opportunities that would've taken us a lot of time and money to do ourselves," he says.
Clark is a former Schwab Institutional executive who started Advisor Partners in 2001 with Andrew Rudd, the founder of Barra Inc. Rudd joins Bellatore's investment committee that includes economists Harry M. Markowitz, Meir Statman and Sanjiv Das.
Advisor Partners' SMA platform dovetails with Bellatore's existing investment management lineup that includes a unified managed account program and a managed mutual fund program known as Altius Select Investment Portfolios.
Capital Allocation & Management is a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based provider of portfolio management and consulting services serving more than 120 independent financial advisors with more than $365 million in assets under management. It was founded in 1987 by Bo Boykin.
Capital Allocation employs modern portfolio theory and tactical management to construct portfolios that are 80% fixed allocation and 20% actively managed. Bellatore's Altius division also focuses on developing portfolios based on modern portfolio theory.
Bellatore's Bellatore Investment Counsel division is aimed at RIAs that manage between $30 million to $250 million in assets. Its services range from technology and back office support to consultation and succession strategies. It's Legion Portfolio Services asset management arm expands the offerings from Bellatore Investment Counsel and competes the likes of AssetMark and SEI, says Bellatore president and CEO Al Steele.
Steele says Bellatore's two recent acquisitions are part of a carefully-crafted growth strategy aimed at expanding its presence in the advisory market. Advisor Partners enables it to address the market for high-net-worth clients with tax-management issues, and Capital Allocation has built a strong relationship with Commonwealth Financial Network.
"We're not a roll-up company," Steele says. "We're focused on getting to critical mass, and we think there's an opportunity to do one or two more acquisitions."