Deal lawyer Corey Kupfer predicts an RIA IPO within two years

A registered investment advisor will probably go public within the next year or two, according to Corey Kupfer, founder and managing partner of Kupfer, PLLC, a law firm serving RIAs.

Kupfer ties that prediction to private equity owners of consolidators: "The bottom line is, it has to happen at some point, or else we have a big problem. If you look at any PE cycle, that's what they're going to be pushing for."

Mercer Advisors, with $111 billion in client assets, refinanced $1.9 billion of private debt with a seven-year term loan B, its first move into the broadly syndicated loan market. Citywire reported on Oct. 15 that Beacon Pointe, a $74 billion RIA, closed a $1.2 billion debt raise.

Kupfer described those deals as rungs toward a listing: "When you're playing at the Mercer level and the Beacon Pointe level, the bottom line is they're racing to get as many deals as they can, hopefully with some deal discipline, but to get to the point where they can go up the ladder and then eventually IPO."

He does not expect a flood. "I would not expect a flood of IPOs anytime soon, but will somebody IPO in the next year or two? Probably, but it's hard to say. Part of it will depend upon how market conditions stay," Kupfer said.

The available precedent is thin. Edelman Financial went public in 2005 and private again in 2012. Focus Financial returned to private ownership in 2023, five years after its IPO. AlTi Global trades on Nasdaq and reported $96 billion in assets in August 2026.

Data compiled by University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter shows 94 U.S. IPOs in 2025, against an average of about 420 a year in the 1990s. "The IPO market is not as robust as it was," Kupfer said. Scale is the other constraint he names: even the largest RIA is small next to technology and manufacturing candidates in a public offering queue. In October 2025, Creative Planning CEO Peter Mallouk said some of the biggest RIAs will eventually run out of room to stay private.

What Kupfer counts in the industry's favor is recurring revenue and the move toward single-brand platforms inside RIA networks, citing the launch of Hightower Signature Wealth last fall and the rebranded Focus Partners Wealth. Firms like Focus Financial and Hightower, he said, are building "much more integrated, single brand rinse and repeat models."

DeVoe & Company's third-quarter Deal Book, as this publication reported, put deal volume down 17%.