The move to acquire Eaton Vance, a provider of investment strategies and wealth management solutions, underscores Morgan Stanley’s goal to create a holistic advisory, investment management and brokerage shop.
Experts say it’s a seller’s market, and the consolidation of the industry will yield better services for retirement plan participants.
The Fifth Third retirement plan business comprises more than 475 workplace savings plans populated by approximately 100,000 participants with $6.21 billion in assets.
Larger, more established firms are acquiring wealth management and RIA firms.
The ‘carve-out’ acquisition brings CAPTRUST’s assets under advisement to $400 billion and represents the continuation of an important retirement plan industry trend involving large, diversified financial services firms.
The recordkeeper also notes that fee compression is largely driving the ongoing industry consolidation.
Industry executives also say that valuations for strong companies are holding steady, even as the pandemic raises broader economic challenges.
Principal Financial Group acquired Wells Fargo’s institutional retirement and trust businesses in July 2019 and aims to complete the integration in 2021—pandemic or not.
Fidelity finds June’s merger and acquisition activity represented over four-times more assets than the deals completed throughout March, April and May.
Now that the deal has been formally approved, integration is expected to take between 18 to 36 months to complete following the close.
Financial services industry merger and acquisition activity has been affected the by coronavirus crisis, but deals continue to be inked—especially among firms looking to serve the needs of registered investment advisers.
With the acquisition of AdvisorEngine, Franklin Templeton expects to enable its independent adviser partners to efficiently deliver goals-based financial planning at scale—including in the retirement plan context.
The digital wealth management platform serves some 1,200 financial advisory firms across the United States that collectively manage over $600 billion in assets.
As market volatility and the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in March, merger and acquisition activity slowed, raising the obvious question of how the record pace of deals will be affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
The federal government will provide itself 30 additional days to review economically significant mergers and acquisitions—which include for example the purchase of TD Ameritrade by Charles Schwab.
The retirement planning business is a people business.
For some years now, advisory firm owners have enjoyed a sellers’ market that has spurred record merger and acquisition volumes.
According to the firms, part of the rationale behind the move is that it combines two highly complementary businesses into a technology-enabled global platform that is more relevant and responsive to client needs.