Wealth firms bought capacity, not size, in a 19-deal week

01Breakaways put $18.6 billion in motion, and capital models diverge#

Jim Atwood and Phil Scott opened Latigo Peak in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., with 48 professionals, operational hubs in Bellevue, Wash., and Boston, and a field office in Los Angeles. The firm is founder-owned and self-funded. The two advisors raised combined revenue from $34 million to more than $130 million over six years, according to the launch announcement, and client assets will custody at Charles Schwab and BNY Pershing.

The Las Vegas firm, formerly MPI Wealth Management at UBS, opened with about $750 million and a minority investment from Elevation Point, which did not disclose the size of the stake; Elevation Point has said it usually takes stakes of at least 20%. Custody sits at Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions.

Raymond Nepa and Jennifer Susco lead a five-person group whose members have a combined 70 years in the industry. The Moves Wire's 11 records for the week include three breakaways and seven team moves.

Our new structure gives us greater control over how we serve clients and the flexibility to build solutions around their needs, supported by the resources and capabilities of leading financial institutions

Russell Price, founding partner, Truing Capital Advisors, in a statement

02The deal tape is busy, but the disclosed sizes are tuck-in scale#

Of the 19 deals, 13 were announced and six closed; 14 carried no disclosed client assets at all. Of the five that did, four were under $1 billion and one fell between $1 billion and $5 billion.

The totals above are Private Wealth Daily's Deal Tracker for the seven days to Oct. 24. The size distribution below is from the same tracker.

Beacon Pointe Advisors and Modern Wealth Management each did two.

The acquirer counts above come from Private Wealth Daily's Deal Tracker. WorthPointe Financial Planners, with offices in California and Texas, accounts for about $1 billion of that; Silver Lake Capital Partners in Dallas advises on about $200 million.

Bob Bukowski, Alpha's managing partner for nearly 38 years, joins as a managing director and establishes the Milwaukee office.

Modern Wealth closed 4thGEN Wealth Management, a $330 million Lodi, Calif., practice whose three advisors join with a senior client associate.

Wealthspire's Ground Control division bought London-based Atlantic Swiss, which manages more than $1 billion for media and sports clients, employs more than 20 people, eight of them advisors, and keeps founding partner Craig Bell as president.

03Leverage and cost of capital now separate the consolidators#

S&P and Moody's both said the debt would not affect ratings; Moody's expects leverage to reach 6.7x EBITDA by year-end.

Third-quarter RIA transactions fell 17% to 77 from 93, ending seven consecutive quarters of record-setting activity, though 244 deals were announced through September, according to DeVoe & Company's Q3 Deal Book. They're just being built a little bit differently".

LPL has acquired more than 75 practices since launching Liquidity & Succession, and DeVoe cites LPL's first-quarter 2025 earnings call for the projection that roughly a third of advisors will retire or leave the industry within a decade, representing $14 trillion.

Cerulli Associates research commissioned by Credent Wealth Management found true fee-only RIAs with at least $5 billion held 34% of assets at year-end 2025, down from 42% in 2020, while hybrids with brokerage businesses held 51% and independents with insurance licenses doubled their share to 14%.

04Advisor books moved $6.8 billion, with UBS units among the departure sources#

The 11 movement records include 10 with a disclosed book, and destinations were concentrated: Osaic took one team worth $2.3 billion, Truing Capital Advisors shows two arrivals at $1.5 billion, Wells Fargo Advisors two at $810 million and Captrust Financial Advisors two at $600 million. On the departure side, UBS and UBS Financial Services each show two teams, at $1.8 billion and $1.2 billion respectively.

Those counts are Private Wealth Daily's Moves Wire for the seven days to Oct. 24. The destination and departure tables below are drawn from the same wire.

Both tables need an asterisk. The wire keeps one record per report, and the Truing breakaway was reported by two outlets, so the same $750 million book appears under both UBS and UBS Financial Services.

The individual records are large. ICG next moved 22 people and $2.3 billion from LPL Financial to Osaic, led by managing partner James Costabile in Wall Township, N.J.. Wells Fargo Advisors picked up two Naples, Fla., books in the same week: the Strong Wealth Management Group from UBS Financial Services at $410 million and Eric Smith from Morgan Stanley at $400 million. Kacy Walker's Kinetic Wealth moved $300 million from Cetera to LPL, and Beth Veloz's Archer Investors team joined WealthForge Securities with no book disclosed.

05Platforms are buying capability in AI, elder care and private markets#

Sanctuary Wealth selected bQuest, an aging-care and longevity planning platform, for its partner firms, with a client readiness assessment, a vetted provider network and a care concierge team. Focus COO Justin Ferri said Nevis will start with account opening and client onboarding, while Jump has opened a limited beta for AI account opening at Schwab and Fidelity.

Visionary Square, a hybrid RIA with $24 billion in assets under supervision, will pay for FINNY AI subscriptions for more than 250 advisors at 140 partner firms, so the advisors pay nothing. Modera Wealth Management launched its own agentic platform, Mira, after two years of development; the fee-only firm reported about $20 billion in assets under administration at Sept. 30 and more than 6,300 clients.

ACORE Capital, a $17 billion commercial real estate manager, opened a wealth platform for financial advisors and named Mick Manning, formerly of Apollo's bridge investment group, as its president. Blackstone's assets for individual investors reached $330 billion, up 15% from a year earlier, with its individual-investor private equity fund BXPE accounting for a record $2.9 billion of the nearly $9 billion raised.

Charles Schwab expects to have its own long/short SMA offering, CEO Rick Wurster said on the Oct. 15 call, without giving a timetable.