B-D network Wentworth closes deal to go public

investmentnews.com:

Wentworth Management Services, a broker-dealer aggregator with four firms and 1,900 financial advisors, and Kingswood Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company,said Tuesday they had closed their merger, which was first announced almost two years ago, and will begin trading as Binah Capital Group on the Nasdaq with the ticker BCG.

The broker-dealer network has approximately $23 billion in assets under management and a pro forma enterprise value of $208 million, making it a microcap company that will have very little, if any, meaningful trading volume.

It’s been boom times for mergers and acquisitions in the wealth management industry for more than a decade, with private equity and public company buyers snapping up broker-dealers and registered investment advisors.

But some firms, including Wentworth Management Services, have chosen to go the route of an initial public listing, which can at times be difficult for firms, particularly smaller players like the new Binah Capital Group, to gain momentum.

As a means to purchase other broker-dealers or RIAs, public company stock can be a useful tool, industry observers noted. And many believe that there will be no slowdown in M&A for wealth management firms over the next five years as investors continue to chase the steady cash flows generated by annual fees charged on client assets.

There’s room in the marketplace for a publicly traded network of independent broker-dealers, particularly as larger firm like Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc. and National Securities Corp. have been acquired in the past few years, Craig Gould, CEO of Binah Capital and former president of Wentworth Management Services, said in an interview Tuesday afternoon.

“We think