Assets in movement due to firm mergers and acquisitions more than doubled last year compared to 2017, according to Fidelity Investments.
As firms continue to reshape themselves, 2018 saw 95 mergers and acquisitions of registered investment advisors and independent broker dealers involving a total of $563.4 billion compared to $265.5 billion in assets that moved in 2017.
However, the number of transactions was down for 2018, according to Fidelity Investments, from 109 in 2017 to 95 for the combined RIA and IBD channels. Others have recently reported increases in the number of transactions as well as in the assets moved. Results vary depending on which transactions are counted.
Fidelity included RIAs registered with the SEC with more than $100 million in assets under management or advisement but less than $20 billion; breakaway advisors with more than $100 million in AUM or AUA, and IBDs with more than $1 billion in assets.
Of the transactions included in the Fidelity calculations, 87 were RIAs, while 8 were broker-dealers.
Large transactions dominated the landscape with 23 RIA deals that involved $1 billion or more, which represented 76 percent of the assets moved. At the same time, the movement among IBDs was up three from 2017 and the assets moved rose a dramatic 174 percent to $454 billion.
Strategic acquirer models in the RIA space, increasingly capitalized by private equity, drove the 2018 movement accounting for 68 percent of the RIA buyers, Fidelity said. The full report is available here.