Family Office & RIA Newsletter

Volume 159 • 01/22/2026

$1B Raymond James Team Goes Independent, Top Acquirers Lead 2025 Deal Flow, and LPL Makes Executive Changes in the latest edition...

Take a Lap Around the Industry 🏃

• JPMorgan Forms New Advisory Group to Tap Boom in Private Markets (Reuters)
• Novogratz’s Galaxy to Launch $100M Crypto Hedge Fund (Financial Times)
• Raleigh Trio Launches Employee-Owned Multi-Family Office EQV Advisory (Citywire)
• Blackstone, Apollo, Ares Team Up With OneDigital in 401(k) Push (Bloomberg)

Family Office Deal Tracker

• Global impact investment firm Blue Earth Capital has raised $100M in a Private Equity round with support from Thiele Family Office
• Group Meeran has participated in a $10M Series B2 funding round for the digital risk protection software company CloudSEK
• equal1, the Irish-based quantum semiconductor firm, has raised $60M in funding with backing from Elkstone Family Office
• In a Seed round, human-centric AI firm Humans& has obtained $480M with support from Emerson Collective and Bezos Expeditions

Source: FINTRX

 Team Movement and M&A Activity 🚨

• $1.3B NYC-based KBK Wealth Management has left Commonwealth after nearly two decades to join Wells Fargo (AdvisorHub)
• Managing $800M in assets, Wilkins Lamb Wealth Advisors has left RBC to join Raymond James (AdvisorHub)
• Marking its first deal of 2026, Merit Financial has acquired the wealth division of SSC CPAs + Advisors, SSC Wealth LLC (Citywire)
• Managing $770M, The Creative Strategies for Modern Wealth Group has moved to RBC from UBS (AdvisorHub)

New RIA Launch

A 10-person Chicago-based advisory team has left Raymond James & Associates to launch an independent RIA, Cohen Capital Advisors, led by Managing Partner Benjamin Cohen.

• The leadership team includes Michael Cohen as founding Chairman, along with senior investment, financial planning, operations, and client service professionals who collectively spent about 12 years at Raymond James
• The group managed roughly $1 billion in client assets at Raymond James
• The firm said the move will allow it to adopt best-in-class custodial and technology partners, enhance reporting and planning capabilities, and remove platform constraints while maintaining existing client relationships and strategies

Source: WealthManagement.com

Reps On the Move ↗️

• Previous Senior Vice President at Osaic Shannon Larson has joined AE Wealth Management as President (Citywire)
• LPL has made two new appointments, with Suzanne Elovic joining as Executive President and Head of Supervision and Mike Murphy as Senior Vice President and Head of Service (WealthManagement.com)
• Previously at Edelman Financial Services, Suzanne van Staveren has joined IMA Financial Group as Chief Financial Officer (Financial Advisor)
• Michael Moriarty has been named CIO of multi-family office Collaborative Capital Advisors (Citywire)

Relentless Deal Flow Defines 2025, but Only the Biggest Acquirers Keep Pace

2025 marked the most active year on record for wealth management M&A, with 322 RIA transactions announced, surpassing the prior high of 272 deals in 2024, according to DeVoe & Company. While the fourth quarter cooled slightly from a historic third quarter, dealmaking remained relentless, fueled largely by private equity-backed buyers pursuing firms ranging from hundreds of millions to multi-billion-dollar asset bases. Despite the surge in transactions, activity became increasingly concentrated among fewer acquirers. The number of active buyers fell, driven by a sharp decline in first-time entrants, which accounted for just 8% of deals—the lowest share on record—as sellers gravitated toward established platforms offering scale and perceived stability. At the same time, several seasoned buyers paused to integrate prior acquisitions or joined larger consolidator hubs.

The result was a widening imbalance between sellers and buyers and rising deal volume per acquirer. Experienced platforms dominated, with firms like Wealth Enhancement and Merit Financial Advisors leading a record number of transactions.

Source: Wealth Management

FINTRX is an industry-leading AI-powered data intelligence solution covering 850,000+ financial firm and contact records, designed to empower industry professionals to efficiently and effectively engage with the global private wealth ecosystem. With innovative AI utility, detailed search parameters and customizable workflow tools, FINTRX enables seamless tracking of allocation trends, in-depth analysis of investment data, high-level relationship mapping and much more. To learn more or request a trial of the FINTRX product, click below.