RIA investment bank Park Sutton Advisors sells to fellow boutique

Consolidation in the RIA market has now extended to the industry’s dealmakers themselves.

RIA-targeted expenditure bank Park Sutton Advisors is marketing alone to Waller Helms Advisors (WHA), a fellow investment financial institution based mostly in Chicago that specializes in insurance policies brokerage, health care and economical engineering transactions.

Specific economic terms of the transaction, which is remaining funded with a mixture of dollars and equity, had been not disclosed, while Park Sutton Advisors claimed that taking care of director Steven Levitt and directors Dan Erichson and John Eubanks will become partners at WHA. The transaction is anticipated to close in the 3rd quarter of 2022 at the time it gets acceptance from Finra.

‘While I genuinely take pleasure in what I’m accomplishing and strategy to do this for quite a few many years to occur, I believed it just could make sense getting section of some thing more substantial, anything a bit much more diversified,’ said Levitt (pictured), who is 53 yrs old.

New York Metropolis-primarily based Park Sutton Advisors has developed from five workforce to 18 over the previous five many years. The expense financial institution effectively shepherded 25 prosperity administration transactions in 2021. 

WHA’s complete worker headcount will swell to 50 men and women as a result of the offer. Park Sutton will keep its brand identification for the time becoming, Levitt stated.

‘The addition of Park Sutton noticeably improves our capabilities in the wealth and investment management sector and produces a expert business with 11 managing directors who properly encouraged on more than 50 transactions in 2021,’ WHA main executive James Anderson reported in a assertion.

Levitt explained to Citywire that he experienced grown fatigued of some of the additional prosaic obligations that occur with running a small business, these types of as compliance and cybersecurity. 

‘Hopefully this gives the senior bankers of Park Sutton, especially me, more leverage,’ Levitt said.

The offer between Park Sutton Advisors and WHA is arguably the most noteworthy a single to contact the RIA M&A advisory house because Liz Nesvold’s Silver Lane Advisors marketed alone to Raymond James in 2019. The offer produced Raymond James a single of the RIA industry’s most prolific expenditure banking companies.

Could more RIA M&A retailers stick to in Park Sutton’s and Silver Lane’s footsteps?

‘Yeah, most likely,’ Levitt mentioned. ‘I assume we face some of the exact problems as RIAs, which is that you want scale. As you get greater, if you genuinely want to improve the chance in the area, you require to make investments, and there is just a good deal of things that usually takes you away from currently being in a position to provide purchasers.’

McDermott, Will & Emery served as WHA’s lawful counsel. Griffin Fiscal served as Park Sutton Advisors’s economical advisor, when Godfrey & Kahn served as its authorized counsel.