RIAs

Despite a 10% drop in the total number of broker-dealers in the past five years, the total number of reps industrywide has fallen a correspondingly negligible amount.

The Chicago-based company bought Tamarac Inc., to expand the services it provides to RIAs.

The firm will specialize in planning around the investment, retirement and insurance needs of the area’s working professionals and families nearing retirement.

Schwab report finds spike in total M&A activity in the RIA sector for the first quarter, but nearly half of the $23.95 billion in total assets under management transacted across 17 deals through March 31 came from one deal.

LPL Financial said its RIA platform, the firm’s custody unit, eclipsed the $25 billion threshold in total assets under custody.

The move reflects the ongoing erosion of wealth management market share in the wirehouse channel, the firm says, citing numbers from Cerulli Associates.

Denver-based Whitebox Advisors, the $2.3 billion asset management firm founded by Andrew Redleaf, is making a concerted push into the RIA channel with the help of third-party marketing firm Havener Capital Partners LLC.

Drawn by the independent business model, Douglas King is leaving a 25-year career at Merrill Lynch in Minnesota to become the Los Angeles-based president of Financial Network Investment Corporation, a Cetera Financial Group company.

Now, Prima Capital’s due diligence and other research services will reach RIAs and financial planners via the Envestnet wealth management platform.

“I am very excited about this transaction. In addition to increasing our assets under management, it gives us some new and interesting fund offerings, and access to a premier distribution system,” says Steven M. Graziano, president of Touchstone.