At a glance
- The PE-backed share of strategic deals eased from 82% to 80.7%.
- Echelon said the gap with sources reporting a softer quarter is "definitional rather than directional": its count covers U.S. deals involving firms with at least $100 million in assets and includes internal aggregation and 11 acquisitions of tax, insurance, retirement and consulting businesses.
- Average deal size dipped from the second quarter, mainly because serial acquirers focused on sub-$1 billion deals, Echelon found.
Private equity-backed acquirers accounted for 92 of 125 announced RIA deals in the third quarter, or 73.6%, down from 75.8% in the second quarter, WealthManagement.com reported from Echelon's Q3 M&A Deal Report. The PE-backed share of strategic deals eased from 82% to 80.7%.
Echelon said the gap with sources reporting a softer quarter is "definitional rather than directional": its count covers U.S. deals involving firms with at least $100 million in assets and includes internal aggregation and 11 acquisitions of tax, insurance, retirement and consulting businesses. The 125 transactions tied two earlier quarters for second-highest on record, behind the first quarter of 2026. Echelon expects the pace to yield more than 500 deals this year, against 466 in 2025. DeVoe, as Private Wealth Daily previously reported, put Q3 deal volume down 17%.
Average deal size dipped from the second quarter, mainly because serial acquirers focused on sub-$1 billion deals, Echelon found. For owners of firms under $1 billion, the most active buyers remain PE-backed, though their share has slipped slightly.
Deal volume held near record while the PE-backed share eased
Q3 2026 announced RIA deals, the PE-backed share of them, and the PE-backed share of strategic deals
Reported by the M&A desk from WealthManagement.com. Published . Corrections