LPL Financial is acquiring Atria Wealth Solutions, which manages about $100 billion and works with roughly 2,400 advisors and 150 banks and credit unions.
As part of the acquisition, Atria will move its brokerage and advisory assets custodied under several broker/dealers onto the LPL platform. This includes two b/ds focusing on banks and credit unions (CUSO Financial Services and Sorrento Pacific Financial) and five supporting advisors (Cadaret Grant, NEXT Financial Group, SCF Securities, Western International Securities and Grove Point Financial).
LPL signed the agreement to purchase Atria on Monday, with the transaction expected to be completed in the second half of this year. The full conversion of Atria advisors to LPL’s platform is slated for mid-2025.
Former Morgan Stanley executive Doug Ketterer founded New York-based Atria in 2017 with the backing of private equity firm Lee Equity Partners, intending to offer their underlying b/ds recruiting pipelines, practice management help and investment capital.
In a statement about the deal, Ketterer said he founded Atria with “the vision to help deepen and enrich” the relationship between advisors and clients, and in LPL, he found a firm sharing that “fundamental belief.”
“I’m excited for the opportunity that our financial advisors and institutions will have to leverage LPL’s breadth of services, vast resources and unparalleled value proposition,” he said.
The deal has an upfront price of $805 million and is structured as an equity purchase, with LPL expecting to finance it through a mix of cash and debt, according to supplementary materials LPL released. The deal's onboarding and integration costs are estimated between $300 and $350 million. Atria's asset mix at the time of the deal was approximately 20% advisory and 80% brokerage, with client cash sweep balances of about $2.5 billion.
Atria clocked numerous acquisitions of its own in the past year, including a $1 billion team from Signature Bank last May. Last fall, Atria finalized its acquisition of Grove Point Financial, a hybrid firm with 400 employees and $15 billion in client assets, from Kestra Holdings. In just the past several months, Atria’s poached teams from Cetera, Edward Jones and Osaic.
But as far back as 2019, Atria fended off rumors it was eyeing a sale. Last June, WealthManagement.com reported that the firm lost five recruiters in the first five months of 2023, including the March departure of Gary Bender, who joined Atria one year earlier from Securities America.
Atria also lost recruiting veterans and twin brothers Scott and Sam Briganti, who came on board in June 2022 and left a year later. The duo launched a consulting firm and stressed that their departure wasn’t related to Atria operations.
Morgan Stanley acted as LPL’s financial advisor during the deal, with Allen & Overy serving as the independent broker/dealer’s legal counsel. Ropes & Gray was Atria’s legal counsel, with Adrea Partners as the firm’s lead financial advisor (with William Blair & Company providing additional advice).
