IEQ Capital, a San Francisco-based registered investment advisor backed by Stone Point Capital with $26.5 billion in assets under management, has acquired EPIQ Capital Group, a Bay Area-based multi-family office with $5.3 billion in client assets.
EPIQ was launched in 2018 by Chad Boeding, one of the four co-founders of Iconiq Capital, according to Bloomberg. Iconiq, which Boeding helped start in 2011, parlayed its connections to Silicon Valley executives—chief among them Meta Platform Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg —into rapid growth. Some rivals have criticized Iconiq for pushing its funds rather than remaining an impartial adviser.
EPIQ caters to clients worth at least $100 million. But unlike Iconiq, it doesn’t peddle its own venture or private equity funds.
Once the deal closes later this year, the combined RIA will have $32 billion in assets under management. The deal will expand IEQ’s footprint in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Newport Beach, Calif., Dallas, Denver, St. Louis, Nashville, Tenn., Boston, Atlanta, and Miami.
Boeding will become a managing partner of IEQ alongside the firm’s co-founders.
“EPIQ was founded with the goal to reimagine a new standard of excellence in the industry, shifting the paradigm on what it means to be a fiduciary and advocate for our clients, providing access to an extensive network of investments and partnerships,” Boeding said in a statement. “I am excited that we are joining forces with IEQ, a firm that shares a similar vision of transforming wealth management."
IEQ was founded in 2019 by Alan Zafran, Eric Harrison and Rob Skinner. They previously founded and led Luminous Capital, a $5.5 billion RIA that sold to First Republic in 2012 for $120 million.
In 2019, the original Luminous team walked out of First Republic after just a handful of years, taking a reported $17 billion in clients with them, about 12% of First Republic’s wealth management assets at the time. They set up two RIAs: David Hou and Mark Sear created Evoke Wealth in Los Angeles, while the others launched IEQ.
In January 2023, IEQ sold a minority stake to private equity firm Stone Point Capital.
“[EPIQ is] our neighbor in the San Francisco Bay Area, and they have a reputation in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco markets for delivering comprehensive and personalized family office services to their clients nationwide,” Harrison said in a statement.
