Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
The first half of 2025 saw a record-setting 132 transactions involving registered investment advisers, totaling $182.7 billion in assets, according to Fidelity’s latest report on mergers and acquisitions.
Compared with 2024, the first six months saw a 25% year-over-year increase; 2024 finished with 233 transactions for the full year. This year also set monthly transaction records in January, March and April, according to Fidelity.
Want the latest retirement plan adviser news and insights? Sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters.
Mirroring similar reports by consulting firms Echelon and MarshBerry, Fidelity found that private equity has done most of the buying, responsible for 86% of RIA transactions and 91% of purchased assets in H1 2025. Fidelity noted that momentum for deals is growing, as advisers increasingly approach retirement age and are looking for exit options, and it suggested the “growth opportunity for RIAs … may not be reaching full potential.”
According to Fidelity, the median deal size for H1 2025 was $517 million in AUM, slightly down from last year’s median of $536 million and noticeably lower than 2021’s median deal size of $700 million. Increased transactions of mid- and lower-range RIAs drove down the median, and Fidelity wrote there is “an increased appetite for all firms—large and small.”
The 20 leading companies in M&A activity from July 2024 through June 2025 each completed at least four, according to the report, and the most active buyer, Focus Partners Wealth, completed 16 deals. In all, Fidelity found that the 20 busiest acquirers made 60% of the deals in that period, down from 74% from October 2021 through September 2022.
Most of the 20 most active buyers were carryovers from 2023 and 2024, but six new companies made the list: EP Wealth Advisors, CW Advisors, Cerity Partners, Lido Advisors, Beacon Pointe Advisors and Bluespring Wealth.
PE firms backed all 20 of the most active buyers, including majority owning 12. The four most frequent buyers were backed by the same PE firm—Wealth Partners Capital.
Of the 16 first-time buyers in H1 2025, three had PE backers, and two were, themselves, PE firms.
Tags
Reported by
Reprints
Please contact Industry Intel at Industry Intel.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.