Minneapolis-based Wealth Enhancement Group announced today that it is acquiring Pillar Pacific Capital Management, a California-based RIA with over $1.6 billion in client assets.
The acquisition marks Wealth Enhancement Group’s first on the West Coast, moving its brand into both the San Francisco Bay area in Pacifica, Calif., and in the southern portion of the state in San Marino, Calif. With the closing of the transaction, Wealth Enhancement Group’s total client assets are expected to exceed $31.8 billion.
“We’ve always had a belief that while scale on a national level is significant and important, local scale matters too,” Jeff Dekko, CEO of Wealth Enhancement Group, told Financial Advisor on Monday. “We’ve looked into deals in California, but we’ve been holding off until now because we believe local scale matters.”
According to Dekko, moving into California now was a matter of finding the right partner, not timing.
Pillar Pacific, which was originally founded in 1993 by current CIO Arthur French, is currently led by Mindy Ying. The firm has seven advisors serving an international high-net-worth individual and institutional clientele.
“They have a very strong presence in terms of how they provide wealth management to their clients, and they combine that wealth management with strong asset management,” said Dekko. “As we went further afield, we wanted a team that could balance those capabilities.”
Under the terms of the transaction, Pillar Pacific will rebrand to Wealth Management Group. Ying will continue at Wealth Management Group as managing director and senior vice president–financial advisor, while French will become director of research and senior portfolio manager.
Pillar Pacific’s proprietary investment strategies will continue to be managed by the team through Wealth Enhancement Group subsidiary NorthCrest Asset Management.
Additional terms of the transaction, which is expected to close in June, were not disclosed.
“There’s a lot of space out there for us to go forward with,” he said. “In the future, we’ll be pursuing additional transactions and we’ll be making more announcements involving the West Coast.”