Wealth Enhancement Group, a fast-growing registered investment advisor backed by private equity firm Lightyear Capital, has acquired another large RIA as it closes in on $10 billion in assets under management.
The Minneapolis, Minn.-based firm said on Tuesday it acquired GDM Advisory Group, a fee-based independent wealth manager in the Philadelphia area with $470 million in client assets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition is the second in as many months for Wealth Enhancement Group, which now has $9.7 billion in AUM. In September, the company acquired OneSource Retirement Advisors, a Philadelphia-based RIA with $276 million in client assets.
Wealth Enhancement Group has made it clear it intends to expand and become an RIA with national presence and scale by acquiring other RIAs in key markets. The deal with GDM Advisory Group is the ninth acquisition the firm has made in the last 5 years.
But the wealth manager isn’t simply rolling up RIAs. Client assets grew organically by more than $1 billion in 2017, far outpacing assets brought in through acquisitions.
“We’re not looking for growth simply to get bigger,” Wealth Enhancement Group CEO Jeff Dekko said after another deal this summer to acquire a Jacksonville, Fla.-based RIA. “We want to find partners that share our vision of building a premier national wealth management and financial planning brand, and that have the skills and values to fully benefit from our team-based approach to simplifying the complexities of wealth management for our clients. Needless to say, we are very rigorous in identifying potential partners and bringing them on board.”
