Allworth's $947M double deal is a tax-capability bet

$947 million buys Allworth Financial two firms, 23 professionals, a CPA-led tax practice in Rochester, and a divorce-planning niche in Indianapolis. It also pushes the Folsom, California-based RIA past $40 billion in assets under management. Bunch frames it as partnership; the deal math frames it as the visible output of a capital raise.

The larger firm is High Falls Advisors, a Rochester, New York-based wealth and tax advisory with $665 million in AUM, led by Kenneth Burke and Jennifer Vogler, who bought the firm from its founders in 2020. High Falls runs a CPA-led, in-house tax practice integrated into the planning process and manages two private funds. The smaller firm is Holistic Financial Partners, an Indianapolis RIA with about $282 million in AUM, specializing in financial planning for people navigating divorce. Its leader, Jason Llewellyn, current chair of the Institute of Divorce Financial Analysts, joins Allworth as a partner advisor. Allworth says the two deals add 23 professionals, including 13 wealth and tax advisors.

The double deal is Allworth's third and fourth acquisition since May, when Integrum Holdings led a capital raise that made it the third external investor on a cap table that already included Lightyear Capital and Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. August brought two more: Sachetta, a Lynnfield, Massachusetts RIA and tax advisory with $1.1 billion in AUM, and Arthur Stein Financial, a Bethesda, Maryland firm focused on federal employees and retirees, with about $141 million. Combined with the $947 million, the post-raise tally is roughly $2.2 billion in client assets in about four months.

The targets share a tax-and-planning orientation. Sachetta is a tax advisory by description. High Falls is CPA-led. Holistic works with divorce clients, where tax and estate questions sit at the center of the file. Arthur Stein's federal-employee and retiree niche is tax-heavy by nature. Bunch's quote — "These two firms represent exactly what we look for in a partnership: proven leadership teams, distinctive capabilities, and a shared belief that clients deserve more than a single-discipline approach to financial advice" — reads like strategy but functions as a shopping list.

Allworth's sequence — a May capital event followed by four acquisitions by September — suggests the raise is doing the work. As this publication has argued, RIA M&A has shifted from an intent-to-close story to a financing and integration story. The buyer pool is shorter, and the buyers still active tend to be the ones with institutional capital behind them. Allworth now has three external investors on its cap table; that is the financial support behind a $947 million double deal.

This publication has argued that the next platform battleground is ownership of the advanced planning stack — that firms with in-house tax and estate depth will hold onto the $5 million-plus households. Allworth is spending private-equity money to test that thesis in real time. The wager is that a CPA who prepares a client's return is stickier than an advisor who merely reviews a portfolio; if that holds, tax depth is a retention tool as much as an acquisition strategy.

The capital story matters as much as the tax story. Bunch took over from co-founders Scott Hanson and Pat McClain in late 2023 and has doubled the firm's AUM from about $18 billion since. Per PWD's records, Allworth's ADV-registered AUM stood at $33.6 billion as of Aug. 29, while the announcement cites more than $40 billion in client assets. Both figures can be true, but the gap is a useful reminder that the press-release number is not the ADV number.

The next test is integration. Allworth counts 493 employees and 75,126 accounts per PWD's records; 23 new professionals across four firms in four months is roughly 5% of the headcount, and the additions span a divorce specialist, a CPA practice, a federal-employee planner, and a $1.1 billion tax shop. Bunch has shown he can close deals. Whether his operations team can absorb those differences is the open question.

None of that makes the double deal the wrong call. The $947 million is the carrying cost; the 13 wealth and tax advisors are the asset. Allworth is buying practices that should make its next acquisition easier to keep, which is a better use of private-equity capital than buying raw AUM.

The milestone worth watching is the next capital event; the $40 billion figure is the trailing indicator of the last one. Allworth's capital table now holds three external investors, the kind of backing that matters to a mid-sized tax practice. The third and fourth acquisitions since May look like the middle of a spending cycle.