DENVER, June 6, 2023 – Mercer Advisors, a national Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) with Assets Under Management (AUM) of approximately $48 billion as of April 30th, 2023, announced today that it is expanding its set of strategic investors, by adding a new investor, Altas Partners (“Altas”). Altas joins Mercer Advisors’ current strategic investors, Genstar Capital and Oak Hill Capital, and over 300 Mercer Advisors employees who own equity in the company. The transaction is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2023.
Mercer Advisors is a leading national fiduciary wealth-management firm that provides a family office for families ranging from mass affluent to ultra-high-net-worth, and serves a spectrum of institutional clients, including companies, endowments, and foundations. Based in Denver, Mercer Advisors has a U.S. footprint of over 80 locations and almost 900 employees. Founded in 1985, Mercer Advisors differentiates itself as a unified and integrated wealth manager serving investors as a fiduciary and providing a broad range of in-house services. These services are tailored to individual clients through a “One Team” approach, including financial planning, investment management, estate planning, tax strategy and preparation, insurance solutions, and trustee services.
“We are excited to welcome Altas Partners as a strategic investor,” said Dave Welling, Chief Executive Officer of Mercer Advisors. “We have had an outstanding partnership with Genstar and Oak Hill for many years and chose Altas as our newest strategic investor because they believe in our mission, purpose, and strategy and are committed to support continued investment in capabilities that will allow us to enhance the way we serve our clients.”
Welling added, “We are unabashedly client-focused first, second, and always. Each year we continue to make significant investments in our people, new services, new technology, and new offerings, all geared to serve clients better and drive our future growth. With over 300 employee-owners representing over one-third of our employees, we are proud to have the broadest number and percentage of employee ownership in the firm’s history, which is noteworthy in the independent RIA industry. Our strategic investors have supported our vision to expand ownership opportunities to all full-time employees and beyond the common elite and exclusive “partners only” model that is still prevalent in the RIA industry.”
“Mercer Advisors is an exceptional company serving a large and loyal clientele,” said Paul Emery, Partner at Altas. “Through its leadership, operational excellence and strategic acquisitions, Mercer Advisors has rapidly scaled and established a leading position in a fragmented industry, all while staying true to its client-centric culture. This investment aligns extremely well with our distinctive strategy of identifying one or two high quality businesses each year that we believe are positioned to grow meaningfully and deliver lasting value to our partners. We are thrilled to help fuel Mercer Advisors’ continued growth alongside the Company’s existing strategic investors, Genstar and Oak Hill, and in close partnership with Dave Welling and team.”
Mercer Advisors’ AUM has grown dramatically, from less than $5.7 billion in 2015, to $16.5 billion at the time of Mercer Advisor’ last recapitalization in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $48 billion today. The firm has invested heavily in enhancing services for its clients, including expanding its investment offerings and platform, expanding its wealth management professionals in 80+locations, adding new talent and expertise to its estate and tax planning teams, and investing considerably in its technology platform. Mercer Advisors also added SRI and ESG capabilities to investment offerings and is one of the first independent RIAs to be a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing. Mercer Advisors is widely recognized as one of the leading wealth management firms in the United States, including being named a 2022 Top 100 RIA by Barron’s, a 2022 50 Fastest Growing RIAs by Financial Advisor, and Wealth Management Industry Awards, i.e., “The Wealthies,” won by Dave Welling as CEO of the Year and Kara Duckworth as a Rising Star. Mercer Advisors has also won Wealthies in the Thought Leadership category for Mercer 2030, a company-wide program created to fulfill the mission of becoming a sustainable organization while contributing positively to the communities it serves. Since2016, Mercer Advisors has completed 75 acquisitions that expanded its footprint, talent, and expertise.
Tony Salewski, Managing Partner of Genstar, said, “We are grateful for the partnership with Mercer Advisors, and the entire management team, as they have built a leading wealth management platform, growing their assets from approximately $5.7 billion to $48 billion, since our original investment in 2015. Importantly, as Mercer Advisors has grown, it has never sacrificed its commitment to serving its clients and helping them achieve their financial goals. We are excited to continue as investors with Oak Hill and Altas as Mercer Advisors embarks on yet another phase of robust growth.”
Steve Puccinelli, Managing Partner of Oak Hill, said, “Mercer Advisors has demonstrated consistent performance and continues to have an extensive runway for sustainable, accelerated growth. We are thrilled to continue this journey with Dave and the management team, Altas, and Genstar. We look forward to being part of their growth as the firm further identifies avenues to enhance its comprehensive wealth management services and rapidly attracts new clients.”
Raymond James served as a lead financial advisor, and Paul, Weiss served as legal counsel to Mercer Advisors on the transaction. Mercer Advisors management and employees were also supported by Katzke & Morgenbesser LLP as legal counsel and Jamieson Corporate Finance US LLC as an advisor. Goldman Sachs served as a financial advisor, and Kirkland & Ellis served as legal counsel to Altas Partners on the transaction.
About Mercer Advisors
Established in 1985, Mercer Global Advisors Inc. (“Mercer Advisors”) is a total wealth management and financial planning firm that provides comprehensive, fee-based investment management, financial planning, family office services, retirement benefits and distribution planning, estate and tax planning, insurance solutions, and corporate trustee and trust administration services. Mercer Advisors Inc. is a parent company of Mercer Global Advisors Inc. (RIA), and Regis Acquisitions, Inc. (RIA). Both are majority owned by Oak Hill Capital and Genstar Capital. Mercer Global Advisors, Inc. is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, is privately held, has almost 900 employees, and operates nationally through over 80 locations across the country. Mercer Advisors manages $48 billion in client assets. For more information, visit www.merceradvisors.com.
AUM data refers to client assets under management (AUM) and client assets under advisement (AUA) by both Mercer Global Advisors Inc. and Regis Management Company. Regis Management Company is a tradename used by Regis Acquisition, Inc. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. and Regis Acquisition, Inc. are affiliated SEC registered investment advisers and deliver investment advisory and family office related services. Mercer Global Advisors Inc. and Regis Acquisition, Inc., are subsidiaries of Mercer Advisors Inc., a parent company not involved with investment services.
Mercer Advisors is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice to clients. All estate planning documentation preparation and other legal advice is provided through its Advanced Services Law Group, Inc. Tax preparation and tax filing are a separate fee from Mercer Advisors’ investment management and planning services. Trustee services are offered through select third parties with which a client would engage directly. Mercer Global Advisors has a related insurance agency. Mercer Advisors Insurance Services, LLC (MAIS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mercer Advisors Inc. Employees of Mercer Global Advisors serve as officers of MAIS. MAIS provides individual life, disability, long term care coverage, and property and casualty coverage through various insurance companies.
About Oak Hill Capital Partners
Oak Hill is a longstanding private equity firm focused on the North America middle-market. Oak Hill applies a specialized, theme-based approach to investing in the following dedicated industry sectors: Media &Communications, Industrials, Services, and Consumer. The Firm implements a highly systematic approach to theme development, proactive origination, and value creation in partnership with management to build franchises of lasting value. Since 1986, Oak Hill and its predecessors have raised approximately $20billion of initial capital commitments and co-investments, invested in approximately 100 companies, and completed more than 300 add-on acquisitions representing an aggregate enterprise value at acquisition of over $60 billion. For more information, please visit www.oakhill.com.
About Genstar
Genstar Capital (www.gencap.com)is a leading private equity firm that has been actively investing in high-quality companies for over 30 years. Based in San Francisco, Genstar works in partnership with its management teams and its network of strategic advisors to transform its portfolio companies into industry-leading businesses. Together with Genstar XI and all active funds, Genstar currently has approximately $49 billion of assets under management and targets investments focused on targeted segments of the financial services, healthcare, industrials, and software industries.
About Altas
Altas Partners is a North American private equity firm focused on selectively acquiring significant interests in high-quality and market-leading businesses with meaningful growth potential. Altas concentrates on specific sectors where it has deep expertise, seeking one or two compelling investment opportunities each year. The Firm’s patient investment philosophy, engaged approach to ownership, and flexible time horizon distinguish Altas as a buyer of choice for many management teams and founders. The Firm was founded in 2012 and operates from offices in Toronto and New York. Altas manages approximately $10 billion on behalf of leading institutional and family office investors from around the world. For more information, please visit www.altas.com.
Awards Disclosures
2022 Barron’s Top 100 RIAs: Advisors who wish to be ranked fill out a 102-question survey about their practice. Barron’s verifies that data with the advisors’ firms and with regulatory databases and then Barron’s applies their rankings formula to the data to generate a ranking. The formula features three major categories of calculations: (1) Assets (2) Revenue (3) Quality of practice. In each of those categories Barron’s does multiple sub calculations. Barron’s measures the growth of advisors’ practices and their client retention. Barron’s also consider a wide range of qualitative factors, including the advisors’ experience, their advanced degrees and industry designations, the size, shape, and diversity of their teams, their charitable and philanthropic work and, of course, their compliance records.
FA Fastest Growing RIAs 2022: Financial Advisor Magazine examined RIA growth by comparing firms’ year-end AUM to the previous year-end numbers reported to Financial Advisor Magazine on its survey responses. This list only includes firms with $500mm and more in AUM.
Wealth Management Industry Awards 2022 “The Wealthies”: A panel of independent judges made up of top names in the industry and led byWealthManagement.com Editor-in-Chief David Armstrong determined the 2022 Wealthmanagement.com Industry Award winners. The best in each category were selected based on quantitative measures of their initiatives—such as scope, scale, adoption, and feature set—along with qualitative measures, such as innovation, creativity and new methods of delivery.
Please Note: Limitations. Neither rankings and/or recognitions by unaffiliated rating services, publications, media, or other organizations, should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if Mercer Advisors is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. Rankings published by magazines, and others, generally base their selections exclusively on information prepared and/or submitted by the recognized adviser. Rankings are generally limited to participating advisers (see participation criteria/methodology). Unless expressly indicated to the contrary, Mercer Advisors did not pay a fee to be included on any such ranking. No ranking or recognition should be construed as a current or past endorsement of Mercer Advisors by any of its clients.
