AMG Wealth Partners to Acquire $5.2B Baker Street Advisors

Baker Street Advisors, one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most prominent independent wealth management firms, is selling a majority equity interest to AMG Wealth Partners.

AMG, a subsidiary of Affiliated Managers Group, has been selectively taking stakes in high-profile wealth management firms around the country, including Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Clarfeld Financial Advisors and Veritable LP in Newtown Square, Pa.

AMG’s parent company follows a similar business strategy of taking stakes in asset management companies.

Baker Street is known for its investment prowess and wealthy clientele, including Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, families and foundations. Baker Street principals Jeff Colin, Mike van den Akker, Chris Wilkens and Jim Milligan were praised by AMG president John Copeland in a statement for “helping clients achieve excellent results using a highly specialized, unbiased approach to investing,”

Although AMG has been extremely choosy in adding firms, Copeland said after the Clarfeld acquisition that the holding company is considering a national footprint “if done in the right way: from local to regional, to super-regional, to national, with the support of a strategic and national partner.”

A national move “will take heavy lifting and be an exercise in studied and intelligent growth over decades,” Copeland said. “It is not a branding exercise.”

Baker Street and AMG have agreed to long-term commitments, but the terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The firm says it advises on an estimated $6 billion in client assets. According to its most recent ADV filed with the SEC, the firm had $5.2 billion under management.

Baker Street is currently ranked number five on Financial Planning’s 2015 RIA Leaders list. However, when complete, the AMG deal would make Baker Street ineligible for the ranking of independent RIAs, given that it is ceding control to outside private equity owners.

Read More:

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
RIAs Financial planning
MORE FROM FINANCIAL PLANNING