Peter Raimondi, who built two previous billion-dollar RIA firms and sold one for an estimated $60 million, announced the launch of Dakota Wealth Management, which opened its doors with $600 million in client assets.
Joining Raimondi as founding partners of Dakota, which will be located in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., are a team from Oakmont Partners, an independent RIA in Peabody, Mass., with more than $300 million in client assets under management. Oakmont principals John DeSimone, Mimi O’Bara and Peter Mawn will serve on the management team with Dakota COO Michael Reed and Raimondi, who will be CEO and chief investment officer.
Raimondi’s record as a successful deal-maker and acquirer is extensive. If past experience is any indication, Dakota’s acquisition strategy is likely to accelerate in the next few years, if not months.
In 1986, Raimondi founded The Colony Group in his parents’ basement after spending two years at Ayco, a financial planning firm for executives at big companies. Today, The Colony Group is one of Boston’s largest RIA firms with $5.3 billion in assets and considered one of the most successful firms in the Focus Financial Partners network. Focus acquired a stake in The Colony Group in 2011.
He left Colony to launch Banyan Partners in 2006. Over the next eight years, Banyan acquired seven firms. These transactions included Silver Bridge, an RIA owned by global law firm Wilmer Hale that had more than $2 billion in assets under advisement. Banyan was able to beat out several other bidders, including some with major private equity backing, in that transaction.
In 2014, Banyan was sold to Boston Private for an estimated $60 million. Raimondi was its largest shareholder and spent more than a year as CEO of the bank’s wealth management arm. before evenutally departing.
Raimondi said that he is backing Dakota with his own capital and not with outside private equity. He feels confident he has the resources to grow his new firm via a combination of acquisitions and organic growth to about $5 billion in assets.
Nine years into a bull market, Raimondi believes there are “potential landmines out there” in the stock market. A 30 percent bear market is hardly out of the question given that most U.S. stock indexes have more than tripled since 2009. That’s one reason why he plans to be “judicious and careful” in both Dakota’s investment and expansion strategies.
Dakota’s investment strategies will entail a personalized and traditional approach using “bespoke” individual equity and, in many cases, option overlay portfolios, Raimondi said. This challenges today’s conventional wisdom in the advisory business as many firms are moving towards passive and computer-driven portfolios.
Options can be used for both downside protection and income generation. “Every high-net-worth client has their own unique situation,” Raimondi said. “Why shouldn’t they have their own unique portfolios?”