CI Financial, a Toronto-based global wealth management firm and significant consolidator of U.S. advisories, today announced its U.S. wealth management group grew 42% in the first half of 2023.

Kurt MacAlpine, CI’s CEO, said in today’s release addressing the firm’s second-quarter financial report that the growth was the result of robust organic growth. Furthermore, the acquisition of three registered investment advisors—Avalon Advisors in Houston, La Ferla Group in Garden City, N.Y., and Intercontinental Wealth Advisors in San Antonio—added an additional $14.2 billion in assets to bring the firm’s U.S. assets under management to $194 billion.

“These results reflect the outstanding quality of the business and the progress we have made in integrating our acquired firms and leveraging our size and scale to enhance our capabilities and services,” he said in a press release. “Earlier this month, we rebranded CI Private Wealth as Corient, giving us a unified brand that better reflects our integrated, national platform and our unique vision for growth.

Corient Private Wealth provides comprehensive solutions to ultra-high-net-worth and high-net-worth clients across the United States. The acquirer, with Canadian roots, has been watched closely in the RIA industry because it has acquired some of the best U.S. firms in the RIA space and paid high prices financed by a hefty debt load to so so.  

In the second quarter, Corient brought in $266 million in assets under management, compared with $195 million for the second quarter in 2022. CI Financial’s second quarter EBITDA were $206.5 million, with an operating cash flow of $126.9 million, the firm said.

Also in the second quarter, CI Financial used proceeds from some sales of minority stakes in its U.S. business to pay down $1 billion in debt, reduce its leverage ratio to 2.9 times earnings and repurchase 17 million shares. The firm also increased its dividend by 11% to $0.20 per share per quarter or $0.80 per share per year.  

All dollar figures are in Canadian dollars on June 30, 2023.