Sargent Bickham Lagudis, a $1 billion registered investment advisor headquartered in Boulder, Colo., is merging with Colorado Financial Management, a $250 million firm in northern Colorado, and taking on the smaller shop's name.
Sargent Bickham Lagudis started out as Sargent & Company in 1988, when partner Mike Sargent launched the firm. It has since grown to five partners, including Sargent, Brad Bickham, Chris Lagudis, Luke Daniel and Meagan D’Angelo. The merger will add partners Josh Miller and David Eads from Colorado Financial Management.
“As we have added partners, we were really at a stage where we had to decide whether we wanted to have a business name that would work for our future, or continue following the convention of adding partner's names,” said Rick Lawrence, president and CEO of Sargent Bickham Lagudis. “And we decided this was a great chance to move to a business name that reflected where our future business was going to come from and where our primary market is.”
The majority of Sargent Bickham Lagudis’s clients are in Colorado, so the Colorado Financial Management name worked well. The firm has an office in Boulder and Denver, and the merger will add an office in Johnstown, Colo. Both firms custody with Schwab.
The firm expects to do more RIA deals in the state, and the new name could help facilitate those mergers.
“Colorado Financial Management is a brand that could absorb other firms into its name,” said Bickham, managing partner. “We think it’s a name we can grow with. If it had been Timbuktu Investments, or something like that, we probably wouldn’t have done this.”