Hightower Buys $1.7B TC Wealth Partners

By Janet Levaux

News January 04, 2022 at 01:36 PM

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Hightower says it bought TC Wealth Partners, an Illinois-based firm that oversees close to $1.7 billion in assets and has 30 employees.

The deal includes Trust Company of Illinois, which does trust and estate planning, administration, guardianship, executor and co-executor services and retirement plan services.

Founded in 1993, "the group has a strong footprint in the greater Midwest, with significant potential to scale nationally," Hightower CEO Bob Oros said in a statement. "We are excited to welcome [CEO] Bill Giffin and the team and see a strategic opportunity to grow their business together."

Hightower works with 122 advisory businesses in 34 states and the District of Columbia. It had $132 billion of assets under administration and $104 billion of assets under management as of Sept. 30.

"As a business with a robust roster of affluent client families and a diverse range of institutional clientele, we have ambitions to grow our footprint and expand our capabilities — though of paramount importance to us is keeping the boutique feel of our business and our relationships," Giffin said in a statement.

The transaction closed Dec. 31.

In an interview with ThinkAdvisor in November, Oros predicted that the trend of RIA acquisitions is "going to continue for years to come. It's still early."

On the whole, if an RIA wants to "preserve" its practice and value proposition in the long term, they "need to expand what they offer," Oros explained.

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