Mercer Global Advisors Inc. today announced it acquired Pinnacle Wealth Solutions Inc., a Midlothian, Va.-based registered investment advisor serving roughly 250 high-net-worth clients with $365 million in assets. The deal closed on December 31, and terms weren’t disclosed.
Pinnacle was founded in 1985 by G. Carl Mahler, Jr., a certified financial planner. According to the firm’s website, Mahler spent six years as a medic in the U.S. Army Reserve during the Vietnam War. He began his financial services career in 1969 in the life insurance industry, and three years later was offered a financial planning position with FDI Financial Corp. He opened the Richmond office for FDI, and later helped create another firm with several of his former partners. He eventually left that company to form The Pinnacle Group, which was the firm's longstanding name before its purchase by Mercer Global Advisors.
Mahler’s partner at Pinnacle is certified financial planner Jill Jeter. A total of five Pinnacle team members have joined Mercer Global Advisors.
Pinnacle is a hybrid firm operating as part of the Raymond James independent contractor division. It offers a range of wealth management services including brokerage and insurance businesses.
David Barton, Mercer Global Advisors’ vice chairman and architect of the Denver-based firm’s expansive mergers and acquisitions efforts, noted in a press release announcing the deal that Pinnacle is the fourth hybrid business his company has acquired. He added these types of deals are more complicated than those involving a pure RIA, and require finessing in order to not disturb the acquired firm’s client relationships and its service lines.
“We created a transition plan to accommodate all these different needs,” Barton said. “We worked very closely with Carl, Jill, and the Raymond James transition team to navigate the complex operational activities necessary to migrate Pinnacle’s business to our RIA platform without interrupting their business or customer relationships.”
In the press release, Mahler said that succession planning needs and changing dynamics within the wealth management industry made him and his partner realize they needed to join forces with a larger firm.
“I was impressed with the depth and breadth of Mercer Advisors’ offerings and how we could leverage their scale and national platform business,” he said.
Mercer Global Advisors is a privately held entity under the umbrella of Mercer Advisors Inc., which is majority owned by Oak Hill Capital and Genstar Capital. With its latest purchase—the fifth announced this year regarding deals that closed in late-2020—the company now has 510 employees, operates from more than 45 offices across the U.S. and manages more than $26 billion in assets.