Growth of businesses occurs through various means such as through partnerships with other businesses, and through mergers & acquisitions. Our Louisiana residents will find it interesting to learn that one of the major wealth management firms, Focus Financial Partners, which has roughly $70 billion in client assets recently acquired a Lafayette, LA advisory firm Summit Financial.
According to a Summit advisor the deal finally became a reality after three years of negotiations. With the resources and help of Focus Financial, it is expected that Summit will be able to acquire more practices in the region. For nearly eight years prior to this recent acquisition, Summit Financial was associated with the Wells Fargo advisors financial network. According to reports, this recent deal is one of the biggest this year for Focus Financial and Summit is expected to add about $600 million in client assets. In addition to Summit Financial, Focus also acquired a wire house group that had managed about a billion dollars in assets at USB.
With the acquisition of Summit, it is anticipated that Focus Financial will extend its influences in the Southeast region. Furthermore, with Focus Financials backing and support, Summit will have significant presence in the Southeast region.
As with most mergers and acquisition, the exact terms of the deal were not made public. However, such agreements involve some capital investment and equity in partnership between the companies. In general, mergers & acquisitions require long negotiations with all the players involved. Each company must examine the benefit to them in making such deals. Furthermore, such talks can take years to happen. Given that billions of dollars may be involved, utilizing the legal services of a business law firm well-versed in business deals, transactions, negotiations and more may be helpful.
Source: Investment News, “Focus Financial adds $600M RIA from Louisiana,” Mason Braswell, April 2, 2014
