Reverence and GTCR’s purchase of Wells Fargo AM is biggest to date for private equity groups
Deal-hungry buyout groups are hunting for targets across the investment industry with Blackstone, KKR, General Atlantic, Stone Point and Thomas H Lee all acquiring asset management or wealth businesses in the past 12 months.
The value of deals involving asset and wealth managers jumped to $38.9bn last year, almost triple the previous year, according to Piper Sandler, the Minneapolis-based investment bank.
Reverence Capital Partners, a little known player, this year emerged as a forceful new competitor after it clinched the biggest deal so far involving an asset management and private equity. Reverence and GTCR, a Chicago-based private equity manager, in February agreed to buy the $603bn asset management arm of Wells Fargo for $2.1bn.
“The Wells Fargo acquisition brings private equity into new territory in terms of the scale of their ambitions in asset management,” says Aaron Dorr, a principal at Piper Sandler.
Source: Financial Times
