LPL snaps up 2,400 advisors, $100B in assets with Atria acquisition
LPL Financial Holdings Inc. said Tuesday morning it was acquiring Atria Wealth Solutions Inc., which launched as a broker-dealer aggregator in 2017 and has 2,400 financial advisors and registered reps across seven broker-dealers who work with $100 billion in client assets.
According to an investor presentation, the equity purchase has an upfront value of $805 million, with up to another $230 million based on retention, or keeping advisors in their place.
Some in the industry have privately criticized LPL’s failure to retain financial advisors in such deals, most notably in its 2017 purchase of broker-dealers from insurance giant Jackson National Holdings; LPL said it had acquired about 70% of those broker-dealers’ revenue.
Since it was acquired in 2005 by two private equity investors, LPL has consistently been an acquisition machine, buying up broker-dealers, and more recently investing in registered investment advisors, as the broad financial advice industry undergoes an extensive consolidation.
In 2022, LPL bought one of the giant branch offices that already used the firm for brokerage services, Financial Resources Group Investment Services, which housed bank brokers overseeing $40 billion in assets at the time.
Earlier that year, LPL acquiredBoenning & Scattergood, a broker-dealer and registered investment adviser headquartered in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, with $5 billion in assets and 40 advisers. In 2021, LPL completed its purchase of financial advisers from Waddell & Reed Financial Inc.
Atria is backed by private equity investors Lee Equity Partners, and Morgan Stanley veteran Doug Ketterer is its CEO. In roughly seven years, Atria bought two broker-dealers with a focus on supporting banks and credit
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