The $8.2 billion Perigon Wealth Management announced Friday that it has added three new executives, including a new chief financial officer, as Chief Executive Officer Arthur Ambarik executes a planned growth strategy that includes pursuing deals in the M&A market.
David Scarpello is joining as CFO from Pathstone, a private equity-backed wealth management firm focusing on ultra-high-net-worth clients, where he led M&A and strategic financial planning efforts.
Before Pathstone, Scarpello served in executive positions at ZeroNorth and Sentinel Benefits and Financial Group, according to his LinkedIn profile. In a statement about the deal, he said he’d been “incredibly impressed” watching Perigon’s “rise from afar.”
“I look forward to working to build upon the incredible foundation as we continue to execute into the future,” he said.
Scarpello is replacing current CFO Chuck Pinson-Rose, who’s been with the firm since 2015. He’ll stay on as the firm’s managing director of finance and Investment while devoting more time to being an investment advisor.
Perigon also hired Brian McGunnigle as its new director of operations. McGunnigle has 25 years of experience in the industry, with expertise in leading ops teams, tech evaluations and implementations, and shepherding M&A integrations. McGunnigle comes to Perigon from the Mather Group.
Additionally, Debra Dunham is joining as the director of transitions and integrations. She previously led integration for the Boston-based wealth management firm The Colony Group.
San Francisco-based Perigon Wealth was founded in 2004, with CEO Ambarik joining in 2013; since then, the firm’s assets under management have grown from $150 million to more than $8 billion.
In January, Perigon announced that Constellation Wealth Capital, a new capital investment firm from former Emigrant Partners CEO Karl Heckenberg, would take a minority stake in the company. Merchant Investment Management opted to drop its minority investment in Perigon. According to Perigon, Constellation’s capital would support both organic and inorganic growth strategies in an attempt to build a national firm.
Perigon is relatively new to the M&A space, having completed its first acquisition in 2020. But shortly after the Constellation deal, Perigon picked up the $425 million firm Prudeo Partners, an eight-person team with offices in Pennsylvania and South Carolina.
In an interview with WealthManagement.com, Ambarik expected the firm to complete between five and seven acquisitions this year, and a total growth rate for the firm similar to the past four years. He also said the Constellation deal hadn’t changed Perigon’s M&A strategy but had only been “additive.”
“The goal here is to have Perigon persist and be a sustainable firm,” he said. “And to do that, the emphasis is on bringing in partners - not just acquiring firms."
