A $710 million exit where the founder stays put

Modern Wealth Management acquired Sanchez Wealth Management Group, a Jacksonville RIA with $710 million in client assets, according to Thursday's announcement, which did not disclose terms. Christen L. Sanchez leads the practice with his sister, Dawn Nichols, and Josh Mandelkorn, and the team that joined Modern Wealth at the end of August includes support staff Lindsey Hall, Jennifer Koeller and Alexandria Sanchez, the founder's daughter.

Sanchez's path is the standard independent build: registered with Princor Financial Services in 1997, moved to LPL Financial three years later, launched the RIA in 2013, and kept a brokerage registration at LPL until August 31, when the team moved to Modern Wealth. His explanation of the sale is what should stop a prospective seller: "For me, this isn't about stepping away, it's quite the opposite," he said, describing a transaction he expects to add years to his career by freeing him for client work.

The buyer's map makes the Florida run look deliberate even if the introductions were organic: Modern Wealth launched in 2023 with $200 million in private equity from Crestview Partners, is dually headquartered in Monterey, California, and the Kansas City area, and has completed at least 23 acquisitions since April 2023, reaching more than $14 billion in client assets. April brought $1.2 billion Legacy Wealth Management in Plantation, June brought $1.1 billion Flaharty Asset Management in Clearwater and Punta Gorda, and now Jacksonville; all three were LPL-affiliated, and President Jason Gordo said the brokerage isn't being specifically targeted, attributing the Florida concentration to "relationships and introductions." Modern Wealth custodies with Fidelity Institutional and Schwab Advisor Services per its Form ADV, so the Jacksonville book presumably repapers onto one of those platforms; the coverage does not say when.

For a principal benchmarking an exit, the disclosed figure is the least useful one, because a founder who intends to keep working past the close presents the buyer with a different set of economics than one who hands over the book and retires, and buyers answer that with structure — how much of the consideration is paid at closing, and how much is contingent. That is the retention risk the buyer now holds, and it is exactly the part of this transaction the announcement omits. Sellers should negotiate the post-close role, the client-transition mechanics and the staff's terms with the same energy they spend on the headline multiple, because the multiple is a single number and the role governs every year that follows it.

There is an instructive symmetry in who is doing the buying: Gordo and co-CEOs Gary Roth and Mike Capelle ran United Capital together and joined Goldman Sachs when it acquired the firm for $750 million in 2019, which means the people setting terms for Sanchez have already sat on the seller's side of a nine-figure transaction and know the script. They also bought a practice that had a family bench in place — a sister, a daughter, long-tenured support staff — the kind of next-generation roster most founders say they lack. The internal-succession alternative existed here; the sale won anyway, which is the practical comparison every $500 million-plus founder should be running rather than assuming the consolidator is the only bidder at the table.

The first amended Form ADV after the transition will show where the $710 million actually sits, and how quickly the accounts leave LPL. That filing will say more about the real price of this deal than the press release did.