United Capital Financial Advisers continues its stated growth strategy by buying Rayner & Haynor Investment Counselors, a three-person firm in northern California with $185 million assets under management and serving 83 families.
The acquisition helps United Capital expand its presence in California. Rayner & Haynor will become United Capital’s 11th office in the state. United Capital now has 51 offices around the country and $10.6 billion AUM. The firm has made more than 70 deals over the last 10 years, and has recently started building offices from scratch in addition to making acquisitions.
Charles M. Haynor, who has been president of Rayner & Haynor since 1999 after starting as an intern in 1990, will become a managing director at United Capital. Haynor said that United Capital’s process, especially its “Honest Conversations” exercise, was part of the appeal of joining the national firm.
“It’s a way to enter into important questions that drive how people spend their money and invest their money,” Haynor said. “The type of planning available, the type of guidance and type of conversations we can be in would augment what we’ve done so far.”
Haynor said that the scale and resources of United Capital would benefit clients and help his firm grow, including United Capital’s customer relationship management software, which Haynor said is a more built-out version of Salesforce and with more features than his firm would have been able to develop on its own.
Hugh Ogilvie and Deborah Hunt, a portfolio manager and office administrator (respectively) at Rayner & Haynor, will also join United Capital in similar positions. Haynor said his firm will keep its name for branding purposes during a transitional phase, but will be re-branded as a United Capital firm by the end of the year.
