Pitcairn, a Conshohocken, Pa.-headquartered household workplace and belief firm, has acquired Brightside Companions, a Baltimore-based registered funding advisor with $2.5 billion in property beneath advisement. This represents Pitcairn’s first acquisition in its 102-year historical past, bringing its whole AUA to $9 billion.
On the identical time, the agency has launched a brand new registered funding advisor entity, Pitcairn Wealth Advisors, with plans to maneuver the overwhelming majority of its property to it over the course of this 12 months. The RIA will use Constancy as its major custodian.
Brightside Companions will shutter its RIA and are available beneath Pitcairn’s ADV. Brightside’s 5 group members, together with companions Tempo Kessenich, Ryan Pollard and Justin Bakewell, have joined as W-2 staff.
Pitcairn President and CEO Andrew Busser mentioned his agency has little interest in taking personal fairness capital or going public. The agency additionally doesn’t need to turn out to be an RIA roll-up or aggregator. Nonetheless, the Brightside acquisition introduced a possibility to develop Pitcairn’s various investments platform, with Brightside having relationships with greater than 100 asset managers and analysis companions throughout enterprise capital, personal fairness, personal credit score and actual property asset courses.
“With Brightside, we noticed a fantastic alternative so as to add to our alternate options platform to make it mainly the gold normal in household workplace alternate options investing,” Busser mentioned. “Now now we have all these relationships with fund managers and analysis companions and every kind of funds. Whereas we had good analysis and entry earlier than, now it’s world-class.”
Pitcairn was based in 1923 as a single-family workplace by the sons of industrialist John Pitcairn Jr. In 1987, it launched a belief firm that started inviting different households to share in its investments. The agency now serves 140 households throughout the nation by way of that belief firm. The Pitcairn household accounts for about 5% of its property right now.
Busser mentioned the agency launched the RIA due to how a lot it has grown.
“Being a state-chartered belief firm is simply too small a regulatory construction for a nationwide agency, and we’ve turn out to be a nationwide agency as a result of purchasers from all around the nation have sought us out,” he mentioned. “It’s necessary for us and for purchasers that we be SEC-regulated, be nationally regulated and have one of the best regulatory construction to be a profitable nationwide agency.”
Pitcairn will preserve the Pennsylvania-chartered belief firm, permitting the agency to proceed serving as trustee on a number of hundred trusts.
The corporate might make different acquisitions within the RIA area, however it will likely be selective, Busser mentioned.
“We’ll take a look at acquisition alternatives that make nice sense for purchasers,” he mentioned. “However very affirmatively, we aren’t going to have interaction within the type of roll-up methods which are extremely popular nowadays. For us, crucial factor is consumer expertise and tradition, and we don’t need to develop so quick that we’d sacrifice both of these issues.”
“We’ve no exit plan of any form as a agency, so we’d not need to purchase anyone in search of that payday,” he mentioned.