RIA roll-ups are now buying retention, not just assets
Savant's member-owner seat and the in-house tax teams at Sowell and Grimes show consolidators trading cash for structures that make sellers and households harder to leave.
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The private-markets gateway is now the M&A target
Vanguard's $4.6 billion Altruist purchase, Aquiline's Flourish control, and Nasdaq's Dasseti close show buyers paying for distribution rails rather than client books.
&Partners recruits $684M Fairbanks team from Commonwealth, its first Alaska practice
The two-year-old hybrid's 124th practice extends a recruiting map built on Wells Fargo alumni into the Commonwealth diaspora, with an outpost in a state the firm had never touched.
Aquiline's Flourish control is a distribution play
David Canter's executive chairmanship is the tell: Aquiline is buying access to RIAs, not just their cash.
Distribution, not AUM, is the new recruiting magnet
Benefits brokers, corporate-retirement shops, digital planners and trading platforms all out-recruited LPL in the latest 30-day table, and the reason is a client pipeline rather than a transition check.
Owner seats are the currency in Savant’s ninth deal
Socha’s $542 million book comes with member-owner seats for its principals, a structure that shows why the RIA roll-up is now a retention game.
Formula clauses under OBBBA fund wrong trusts
A $12 million estate can now leave the surviving spouse with nothing, because the formula that once moved $1.5 million moves $15 million.
The Bank of Mom and Dad needs a process
Nearly a quarter of first-time buyers leaned on family money in 2025; the RIA that systematizes the 709, the GST allocation, and the title question will own the second gift as well as the first.
Arax gets a seat on CFP Board's career-changer pipeline
Cary Carbonaro's $125,000 scholarship is small money and a deliberate recruiting signal for Ashton Thomas and its parent.
JOSS trio brings 32-deal record to Stewards Real Assets
The team move carries two decades of underwriting history while disclosing no terms.
Nasdaq's Dasseti buy makes diligence the product
Dasseti's $34 trillion manager coverage is now the workflow layer of eVestment, and the real asset is the response data, not the fund count.
Three breakaways, $945 million, and the fight moves inside the channel
LPL's Linsco, Raymond James' employee channel, and NewEdge split a $945 million week of breakaway teams, and none of them chose the pure independent route. The recruiting war is now about which affiliation model wins.
UBS imports RIA playbook in Southern California push
A new Irvine hub and a $1.4 billion Bernstein team import the independent playbook into UBS's employee channel.
SEC private-access plan doubles as an RIA fee overhaul
The reported performance-fee provision would hit existing RIA contracts before retail access widens.
SEC private-access plan puts performance fees front and center
A reported SEC proposal would open private markets to more retail investors and allow advisers to charge performance-based fees more broadly, but the fee change is what will land in existing RIA contracts first.
Savant's Socha buy is a template for founder-led sellers
A $542 million Corning acquisition barely moves Savant's $56.5 billion book. The member-owner seat for the seller's CEO is the template worth watching.
Sowell builds an in-house tax team for $5 million households
The Arkansas RIA's Advanced Planning Group puts estate and tax depth behind Cache River Private Wealth — a build-versus-buy bet on keeping wealthy families.
Grimes' tax-practice deal is a retention play
The $7 billion RIA bought eight CPAs and 800 clients to make tax depth part of retaining the households it brings in.
Advisors go home as U.S. equity bias deepens
Fidelity's look inside 5,579 advisor portfolios finds a homeward rotation, and a quarter of books hold no international equities at all.
The SEC's Private-Markets Gate Is Becoming a Distribution War
A rulemaking that opens private assets to retail investors will move the fight from who qualifies to who can explain illiquidity.
UBS hires $1.4B Bernstein team, betting the client network travels
The four-advisor liftout prices talent at $2.9 million per advisor and tests whether the athlete-and-entertainer network follows them to Century City.
AssetMark hires a Russell CMO as the platform fight turns to messaging
The September 1 appointment puts a former asset-manager marketer over brand and advisor engagement at the Concord, California-based platform.
Allworth and Sequoia buy capabilities, not just AUM
Two tax-led deals point RIA M&A toward its next front: planning expertise.
Allworth's $947M double deal is a tax-capability bet
Two tax-led firms push Allworth past $40 billion and show where its private-equity capital is going.
Eleven breakaways, 979 moves: custody is now the contract
The breakaway has become a rounding error; the month's deals show the talent war is being fought over custody networks and whole enterprises.
Altruist pushes Hazel into full financial planning
Days after Vanguard said it would acquire Altruist for $4.6 billion, the custodian's AI tool now spans retirement, estate, tax and more—and works for advisors who custody elsewhere, a direct challenge to standalone planning software.
Orion adds BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard models to its tax engine
The TAMP is wrapping other managers' models in its tax technology, and Vanguard's participation shows the tax layer is becoming the product.
Cyndeo hires Dynasty's Casey Jorgensen to run growth
The $3.7 billion RIA is installing a platform-trained operator to turn recruiting, M&A, and organic growth into a single scalable engine.
Sequoia's BSW buy is an integration play
The Akron RIA's second $1 billion-plus deal of 2026 brings in-house tax and estate services into a $34.9 billion platform.
Wealth Enhancement adds a $376 million Virginia tuck-in
The four-person Glen Allen team brings a wirehouse-to-independent-to-consolidator arc to a buyer already stacking small deals this summer.
Advisor moves jump 16.2% as the platform war moves to retention
Diamond Consultants counted 11,172 experienced advisors switching firms in 2025, and the firms winning the next round are selling continuity, not checks.
Merit's first CTO turns the roll-up trade into an integration trade
After 61 acquisitions and $30.1 billion in assets, the Atlanta RIA's next test is whether 55 offices can produce one client statement.
LPL's Linsco pitch is winning wirehouse talent
Three advisors left Morgan Stanley and RBC for a W-2 independent practice, the latest proof LPL's employee channel is the toughest rival the big banks have.
Hazel turns the financial plan into a commodity
Altruist's AI planning agent collapses a specialist shop into a single advisor, forcing the RIA's core deliverable to reprice.
Hightower hands Dispatch the keys to its data layer
The Signature Wealth deal is a bet that the next phase of RIA M&A runs on integration, not aggregation.
Custody's new battlefield is the software that moves the book
Hightower, Altruist, and Cetera are turning onboarding speed, planning portability, and open-architecture support into recruiting weapons that rival transition cash.
Oppenheimer's Berry hire buys access to the NIL era
The $6 billion Robinson Group is buying a door into the NIL era with a recognizable name.
Altruist's AI planner is a wedge into rival custodians
The Hazel planning agent works over any custodian's books, putting the planning layer ahead of the custody account.
Grimes brings tax prep in-house as mid-sized RIAs chase retention
The $7 billion RIA's purchase of a Massachusetts tax shop, backed by Rise Growth, points to a tax and estate push among mid-sized firms and a bet on keeping $5 million-plus households.
Hightower bets its employee channel on Dispatch's data layer
The $28 million fintech's transition software turns back-office speed into a recruiting pitch for a $35 billion channel.
MAI puts an integrator in charge of growth
Carlyle-backed MAI adds a 30-year operations veteran to its top leadership as the buying spree gives way to integration.
Partners Group names co-CEOs after profit falls 13%
A two-person corner office signals a deliberate transition at the Swiss private-markets manager.
LPL takes Mariner's $31B network in one swoop
The Mariner Advisor Network deal moves the custody wars from team-by-team recruiting to a fight for whole enterprises.
HIG taps Blackstone exec for Asia private-wealth push
The hire puts private wealth at the center of HIG's Asia fundraising mandate.
Brown Advisory files a second venture feeder in ten days
The $12.3 million Form D landed a week and a half after a $29.9 million venture feeder, its '- B' suffix marking a planned series rather than a one-off.
Wenk sells Altruist to Vanguard, keeps the Bogle faith
The founder who took $4.6 billion in cash says the money was never the point; the custody race has reset, and the Bogle disciple now has to prove the mission survives Vanguard's governance.
Banking for breakaways with the conflict removed
Fieldpoint Private exited wealth management before launching Benchmark with Max, a concession that makes the RIA banking pitch credible.
Record ETF launches hit an RIA shelf that barely moves
AdvizorPro's 13F data shows the average RIA portfolio added 4.5 ETFs in the second quarter while more than 1,000 new products launched; the incumbent issuers held shelf space.
&Partners lands its 123rd practice with an $838 million Wells team
The St. Louis hybrid’s alumni pipeline keeps compounding as Wells Fargo fights attrition on two fronts.
Altruist's $4.6 billion cash sale resets the exit math for startup custodians
The all-cash Vanguard deal puts a price on the dual track — and leaves the IPO story looking thin for everyone still standing.