Midwestern wealth corporations Rothschild, Sentinus shut $5B merger

Two Illinois-based wealth administration corporations closed a deal that brings their mixed complete belongings underneath administration to almost $5 billion, reflecting a still-hot marketplace for M&A offers. 

Chicago-based Rothschild, a hybrid RIA and broker-dealer with roughly $4 billion in AUM which is owned by personal fairness agency Tin Goose Holdings, has merged with Sentinus, an RIA with roughly $1 billion of AUM primarily based in Oak Brook, Illinois. The brand new entity will proceed working underneath the title of Rothschild, according to a press release Tuesday. The deal closed formally on July 27, a spokesperson stated in an e-mail. 

“We all the time knew that we needed to get larger to remain unbiased,” Phil Johnson, the CEO of Sentinus and incoming president of Rothschild, stated in an interview. Whereas Sentinus has 10 monetary advisors, Rothschild had 15, Johnson stated. 

Because the unbiased market grows and competitors for wealthy shoppers heats up, many smaller corporations have come underneath strain in recent times to consolidate. Personal fairness has more and more backed the financing of these offers, in line with a current report on offers by funding financial institution and business consulting agency Echelon Companions. 

Learn extra: RIA M&A offers slowed in second quarter

Johnson stated that Sentinus had made acquisitions of its personal in recent times and had grown nicely organically, however up to now couple of years he had taken calls from “numerous totally different individuals” to weigh the choices round becoming a member of with one other agency. 

Over a yr in the past, Johnson’s group was launched to the group at Rothschild, and ultimately decided it was the proper match. “We simply stored in touch and stored speaking and we acquired to know one another.… We (understood) the advisors over there, how they do enterprise,” he stated. 

Each corporations had a robust client-centered tradition, Johnson stated. 

It additionally helped that Rothschild had “strategic capital” and a robust 401(k) service to offer the business-owner clients of Sentinus. That unit has round $2 billion in belongings underneath employer retirement plans, Johnson stated. 

The mixed corporations will primarily serve business-owner shoppers at varied phases of wealth from mass prosperous to ultrahigh internet value. The wealth of an entrepreneur can fluctuate, Johnson stated — they is likely to be value $60 million however have solely $1 million or so in investable belongings as a result of a lot of their wealth is tied up of their firm. 

“We’ll be there in the event that they ever have a liquidity occasion,” Johnson stated of these shoppers. “We do plenty of govt comp plans, enterprise succession methods, generational wealth switch methods.”

“We sit up for working with the Sentinus group to draw like-minded monetary advisors, shoppers and companions,” Owen Schnaper, the chairman at Rothschild and companion at Tin Goose, stated in an announcement. 

Schnaper added that the corporations would concentrate on “increasing our footprint whereas enabling us to offer companies uniquely tailor-made to our shoppers’ wants.”