Bank M&A wave will redraw the advisor map
For wealth managers, the bank consolidation wave is a custody and talent story before it is a lending story.
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Confluence minority stake is a growth bet
Constellation's minority investment in $7.6B Confluence leaves the founders in control and the investor's return dependent on the next valuation.
Gateway bets coaching can fix the 72% rookie failure rate
A Connecticut hybrid RIA is spending on continuous mentor access to keep next-gen advisors from washing out.
BlackRock explores sale of TCP Capital's $671m loan book
A sale of the troubled vehicle's remaining portfolio would show where private credit books actually clear.
Deep-tech resilience fund reports $500M in 16 days
A $500 million raise in sixteen days lands on a Form D that leaves the fund's cap blank and its terms in the private placement memorandum.
Elad Gil's Cosmic files three venture funds seeking $3.76 billion
Three Form Ds, one date, no capital sold: the architecture tells allocators the manager is selling choice, not a single fund.
AmeriFlex's Scout AI targets advisors near retirement
The hybrid RIA is using Claude to find succession prospects before competitors do — and betting the first call wins.
The 10,000-advisor ceiling meets one million plans
Cerulli sees one million DC plans by 2030 and 92% in the micro market; the economics say the old RPA channel cannot serve them.
LPL recruits Wells Fargo tech chief for Latitude push
Jonathan Lewis joins as CTO while LPL bets platform engineering is the next retention weapon.
Conte Wealth's $1.6B LPL move is a lineage play
The Camp Hill firm's official asset total comes in above early estimates, and a third-generation, 24-advisor practice is the real prize.
Schwab's $5 million referral bar is a custody strategy
Raising the SAN minimum to $5 million turns the RIA referral program into a high-net-worth introduction service and exposes how dependent firms are on custodian leads.
The Custody Handoff Is the Talent War's New Front
Feathery's $30 million raise and LPL's $1.6 billion liftout show the battle for advisors has moved to the workflow that moves their accounts.
Levitt opens a New York base for Americans whose U.S. plans don't survive the move
The France-based manager is chasing a transatlantic client pool that no single adviser on either side is built to serve.
The marginal dollar is chasing megawatts
JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are reportedly structuring $3 billion for Nscale while the deal log fills with power-generation transactions.
The $21B RIA that says no to every buyer
Baker Street's 22-year acquisition-free run is a rebuke to the M&A machine — and the culture buyers say they prize is the one thing it won't sell.
Nine solo moves for every team liftout
PWD's 30-day tracking shows the advisor talent war is now a volume game, with UBS the largest source of churn and Farther and Tastytrade the winners of the solo move.
Barings names DWS veteran to lead U.S. wealth expansion
The new role tasks a distribution builder with closing the advisor-education gap Cerulli calls the industry's biggest obstacle.
U.S. Bank bets on credit to keep private banking teams
Days after a $2.4 billion team left for LPL, Chris Peary's promotion puts the balance sheet at the center of the retention pitch.
Independence is a product now. Choice is the real asset
Sanctuary CEO Adam Malamed frames independence as a spectrum, and the platforms that treat choice as the product will own the next decade.
Feathery raises $30M to automate the custodian handoff
The round bets RIAs will pay for the workflow layer that custodians still control.
The Conte move: LPL recruits a family, not a book
A third-generation, 24-advisor family practice is the real inventory in a $1.6 billion liftout from Cambridge to LPL.
The custody layer gets its own talent war
Schwab, Pershing and Orion reset their leadership in a single week while a $2.4 billion team walked to LPL. The contest for talent now runs through the platforms that hold the assets.
DIF's $506M Luxembourg haul makes Form D a two-way street
Two Luxembourg SCSp vehicles disclosed $506 million in US sales on the same day US shelf LLCs and niche feeders filed smaller pieces through the same form.
Tech-native platforms are winning the advisor talent race
Farther and Tastytrade logged 100 market events in 30 days, more than three times LPL and Commonwealth combined.
FiNet's bank-team raid redraws the independent channel
A $1 billion Truist liftout and a UBS team land at Wells Fargo FiNet in one day, making the broker-dealer the fast exit from the employee channel.
Wells Fargo FiNet lands $1B Truist team inside Merritt Point
A seven-person team leaves Truist for an existing FiNet practice, the latest sign that the independent channel is now the consolidation vehicle.
The platform talent war moves upstairs
Citi's same-day haul from MSCI, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan, plus Orion's reshuffle and Cetera's capture of Fidelity's Ed O'Brien, pushes platform leadership to the center of the distribution war.
VastAdvisor's insider SAFE says distribution beats model quality
A $1 million round from advisor-side insiders points to the next AI battleground: the client meeting.
The benefits channel is the new recruiting battleground
OpenArc and OneDigital logged 149 events in 30 days, clearing UBS's 120, as the advisor talent war pivots from wirehouse breakaways to benefits and retirement books.
Coastline's debt-funded dozen turns RIA M&A into a credit trade
A $100 million private credit facility with a senior claim on the client book shifts the RIA consolidation trade's endgame from the last deal to the first default.
The two engines behind RIA dealmaking's 40% run
The debt-funded model is the more honest trade, and the more fragile one.
Citi taps MSCI's Kokolis to head platform experience
The platform-experience mandate puts the front door of Citi's wealth platform at the center of the distribution war.
VastAdvisor's three insider backers are the deal
A $1 million SAFE from advisor-side insiders says more about distribution than technology.
The discount can't survive success in evergreen seconds
Evergreen secondary funds book real gains from discounted purchases, but the gains are a finite resource that every new dollar dilutes.
The shelf-SPV is fractionalizing private equity
Five sub-$3 million vehicles filed under one series LLC — institutional feeders are following the same template.
T. Rowe's F/m deal buys a product factory
The $19 billion fixed-income acquisition is structured to keep F/m's product team in place—the real asset T. Rowe is paying for.
Coastline turns to private credit for its next dozen deals
The Kestra affiliate's $100 million facility funds its next 12 acquisitions with debt instead of equity, giving the lender a senior claim on the client book.
Power supply becomes the new AI capital market
Data-center operators and the DOE are putting capital behind power before compute.
NewEdge lands $2.2B Bernstein team to lead Houston
Three deals this week show RIA growth no longer comes from one place.
UBS to pay advisors handsomely for banking products
The wirehouse's new U.S. bank turns deposits and credit into advisor compensation, a retention play that sharpens the contrast with fee-only RIA economics.
The 7.5 out of 10 problem hanging over every RIA CRM
Advisor satisfaction with CRMs lags planning software. AI notetakers are building the workflow layer incumbents left open.
AE Wealth's $250 billion target outpaces its organic growth
Shannon Larson, the new president from Osaic, brings an M&A record to a firm whose $52 billion base grows 12% a year — and whose 2035 goal needs about 19%.
The 564-lender gap is private credit's real risk
Most direct lending managers have never seen a downturn. The current headlines are less about the asset class than about who should be trusted with capital.
Recruiting overtakes dealmaking in 30-day RIA tracking
Advisor moves outpaced deal announcements by 86 over the month, with UBS logging 110 events as the talent war shifts from M&A to team raids.
IRS ruling shields stock buyout from foundation self-dealing tax
A private letter ruling says a company can exercise a post-death option to buy a shareholder's stock without triggering the private-foundation self-dealing tax — provided the buyout meets the estate administration exception's five conditions.
FiNet wins back a UBS team and adds an Ameriprise practice
Frederick Spagnola and Jon Vallaro return to the Wells Fargo independent channel, and Gabriel Armancas brings his $140 million Ameriprise practice to FiNet.
Upstream GPOA planning turns an unused exemption into a basis adjustment
A general power of appointment can turn an older relative's unused federal estate tax exemption into a basis adjustment on a wealthy client's appreciated trust assets.
Trust now outranks fees when investors pick an advisor
TransUnion finds trust and reputation lead selection factors while Gallup shows advisors hold far more confidence than AI. The firms that make fees legible keep their pricing.
Baker Street's $21B run shows PE owners don't have to buy
The San Francisco RIA sold a majority stake in 2015. Then it grew 12% a year without acquisitions. Private equity in the RIA market isn't always an M&A mandate.
Invesco cuts core real estate fees 20% to ease redemptions
A 20% fee cut rewards investors who stay. The tender offer prices exits at 95 cents on the dollar.