Focus Financial Partners has appointed two executives at partner firms to senior leadership roles, as it merges its sprawling ecosystem of companies into a small number of its existing entities.
Mitch Kovitz, principal, founder and co-chief investment officer at Kovitz, a $7.68 billion RIA, will serve as vice chairman. Michael Nathanson, CEO of The Colony Group, a $21 billion RIA, will take over as president of Focus, effective Feb. 1. Both will continue in their current roles at the RIAs. Dan Glaser, chairman of Focus, continues to serve as interim CEO.
Last year, Focus was taken private in a sale to private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, and as a result, all three Focus founders exited. Former COO Rajini Kodialam and former head of M&A Lenny Chang stepped down in early August—almost a month before the deal was finalized—and CEO Rudy Adolf left in October. Kodialam has since resurfaced as a board member at TIFIN AG, which was recently spun off from TIFIN.
In November, Focus announced four personnel changes, reflective of a “strategic evolution as a private company toward a more cohesive organization that seeks a common purpose, higher levels of collaboration, and which operates with greater levels of efficiency for the benefit of its partner firms,” the company said in a statement.
The latest appointments bring Focus closer to its goal of consolidating around 90 independently-operated subsidiary practices into a handful of its largest firms, with Colony and Kovitz as likely candidates, WealthManagement.com has reported. Focus has bought out the management teams of Colony and Kovitz and converted them to “hub” firms that will acquire other Focus partner RIAs.
