Captrust adds 13-person, $3B Truist team as Hoge cites equity

Captrust Financial Advisors has added the Hoge-Barrett Group, a 13-person team that covered $3 billion in client assets inside Truist Investment Services, InvestmentNews reported. The Raleigh-based RIA oversees about $1.3 trillion in total assets under management and advisement.

The group includes five advisors, seven support staff and a portfolio manager, InvestmentNews reported. The advisors joining Captrust are Alex Barrett, Josh Crane, Aaron Spivey, David Peterson and Harry Cross. Hoge, who is based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, started his career in 1999 at Wachovia Securities and joined Scott & Stringfellow, a Truist predecessor, in 2008, according to his regulatory record.

Every Captrust employee has a pathway to equity, according to Scott Matheson, Captrust's managing director and head of client solutions. Just over 68% of the firm's more than 2,000 employees hold a stake, he said. "I think employee ownership creates a pretty powerful alignment," Hoge told InvestmentNews. "We wanted to invest alongside people and leaders we trust, which is Captrust, while creating some ownership opportunities for the team." Matheson said equity is part of how Captrust pays for the groups it acquires: "We share equity as a part of the consideration of acquisitions, so that we are in fact partners from day one."

Employee ownership sits alongside significant outside capital. Carlyle took a minority growth stake in Captrust in 2023 and holds a seat on the parent company's board. GTCR, which first invested in 2020, still indirectly owns more than 25% of the firm, according to InvestmentNews, which cited GTCR's SEC disclosures.

Hoge said he weighed launching his own independent firm backed by private equity before choosing Captrust. "Could have had private equity back myself," he said. "We obviously have enough scale as a team, but I wanted to go to a platform that was ready for us, was ready to deliver the resources that the clients want." He added that building operations from scratch would have delayed the resource boost he wanted clients to feel right away: "I didn't want a client to have more of the same or just in a different look."