We have a quiz! Play along at home! It's a fun, if occasionally labored, way of covering the most consequential stories in US wealth management from the last year. How many can you remember and what will their impact be? Alex, Ian and Andrew discuss. On the topic of massive news, the team also breaks down one last big deal — Corient's approach for $89bn AlTi Global. This is our final episode of 2025, thank you all for listening. This Week in Wealth will return in 2026. Happy holidays!

For our penultimate episode of 2025, This Week in Wealth is joined by Cetera Financial Group CEO Mike Durbin, who discusses everything from the firm’s efforts to recruit Commonwealth advisors to the importance of M&A for growth. In both instances, it’s a case of watch this space! He also explains why the firm is not solely focused on the RIA model and shares the pressures that keep him on his toes. 

When robo-advisors first arrived, they were supposed to be an existential threat to the traditional wealth management industry. But It didn't quite work out that way. Alex, Ian and Alec discuss a few timely events in the robo business, as two of the sector's biggest businesses — Wealthfront and Betterment — pursue an IPO and raise fees on their smallest clients, respectively.

Alec Rich, Ian Wenik and Alex Steger discuss Citywire’s recent scoop on Mobile Assistant, a transcription service for advisors, which floated (and ultimately decided against) using anonymized historical data to train a wealth-focused AI tool. The story is interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it raises questions about what kind of legacy data advisors might have with various service providers and how that could be used in a world of AI. The team also dig into a reshuffle at the top of Fidelity’s custody division with leader Rohit Mahna leaving after just two years in the job.   

Andrew, Ian and Alex discuss the end of a two-year legal saga between Mercer and ACG Wealth, a $1.3bn shop that the mega-RIA acquired in 2021. The deal quickly soured leading to claims and counterclaims over missing revenue, lower payouts, golf days and defamation. The team recap one of the messiest divorces in RIA M&A. They also breakdown LPL's move to stake $41bn Private Advisor Group and what this might mean for the broke-dealer's (sometimes tense) relationships with its OSJs.

Ian, Sam and Alex discuss the quiet rise of $580bn RIA Wealthspire, which this week unveiled its new C-suite following its re-acquisition by PE backer Madison Dearborn and subsequent merger with three other businesses. The team also looks at another wealth giant, $89bn AlTi Global. The firm is also a product of a series of mergers, and – according to Citywire’s reporting – there might be more deals to come.

Ian and Sam join the pod from Denver, Colorado where they have been attending Schwab Impact, the custodian's annual advisor jamboree. A bellwether for the wider wealth management industry, headlines from this year’s conference have been dominated by ... err ... Schwab, which has been busy buying a private markets platform, launching a growth consultancy for small RIAs, and cracking down on 401(k) credential sharing. To name just three stories. The Week in Wealth team break down these news items and more from the Mile High City.

Alex, Ian and Sam discuss Sam's reporting on investment bank and broker-dealer Stifel emphatically denying that it is selling itself to Raymond James and how Thursday's denial doesn't necessarily mean the story is over, plus Ian explains how and why Constellation Wealth Capital's Karl Heckenberg is looking to raise $2bn from investors to buy minority stakes in RIAs.

Ian and Houlihan Lokey managing director Steven Levitt have an extended conversation about how RIA auction processes work, what Steven learned from selling his own business to a larger institution and what might cause wealth management dealmaking to slow down.

Alex, Ian and Andrew break down two of Citywire's biggest scoops of 2025: Schwab's decision to tighten the eligibility requirements for clients to be referred out to its affiliated RIAs and Edelman Financial Engines halting its sale process and subsequently changing CEOs. The trio also recap Creative Planning's acquisition of retirement plan business SageView Advisory Group and Citywire's flagship CIO Summit in Austin.

Alex, Ian and Andrew have an in-depth discussion about the hidden role that alternative asset manager Ares Management has played in funding so much of the M&A activity in the wealth management industry through its private credit division. Now that Ares is a direct equity investor in an RIA through its recent deal with EP Wealth, what is the future of its shadow banking operation?

Citywire RIA’s roving reporter Alec Rich hopped on a plane to Georgia to cover the latest twist in an ongoing legal battle between $129bn breakaway OpenArc Corporate Advisors (plus Dynasty Financial Partners and Charles Schwab) and Merrill Lynch. He joins the pod to share everything he learned in Atlanta and explain what happens next. Also on the podcast, Andrew talks about that rarest of things — a wealth firm going public. And Ian is back (sort of) with the lowdown on Ares’ first foray into buying equity in an RIA.  

Andrew Foerch, Alec Rich and Alex Steger discuss a $129bn team's decision to ditch Merrill Lynch and set up an RIA with help from Dynasty and Schwab. The scale of the move is huge and so are its ramifications for all parties involved. Not least because Merrill has already filed a doozy of a lawsuit. Andrew, Alec and Alex get into it all. They also look at the perhaps surprising wind-down of Strive Wealth Management, which is shutting shop less than a year after its formal launch. 

Ian Wenik, Andrew Foerch and Alex Steger discuss the latest evolution in Hightower's corporate strategy — to consolidate and centralize its affiliate advisors. The team explores the firm's motivation for doing this and what it says about the wider RIA market. They also analyze two major deals — Creative Planning's swoop for SageView and the Pritzker Org's Wellspring stake — and catch up on Andrew and Ian's time at last week's Future Proof conference. 

Few people have overseen more RIA deals than Accelerated Wealth Partners CEO Eric Amar. During a decade at Focus Financial Partners, he worked on more than 60 mergers and acquisitions, giving him a firsthand view of what buyers want, and what sellers should know, when making a deal. In this episode of This Week in Wealth, Eric talks to Ian and Alex about that process. He shares how it has changed with the influx of private equity money, the key metrics that buyers look at, and what sellers should ask so that they can make a decision that’s best for them.

Ian and Sam Bojarski have an extended discussion about Sam's scoop on LPL Financial making a concerted push to convert hybrid advisors onto its corporate RIA. In addition to discussing who wins financially through these conversions, Ian and Sam touch on Sam's brush with fame and King of the Hill.

M&A, beards, babies and baseball — this podcast has it all! Ian, Alex and Andrew go deep on MAI and Evoke's tie-up and Merchant’s minority investment in a $2.5bn California RIA — two deals which speak to the maturity of the RIA market and the variety options now available to sellers. Facial hair, paternity leave and the Mets also get a mention.

Ian and — in his podcast return — Andrew Foerch discuss what Cresset's move to merge with $124bn investment consultancy Monticello Associates says about the industry-wide drive to acquire wealth assets which may not be under management and talk about how $25bn Homrich Berg's rebrand is a sign of how much the RIA industry has changed recently.

Alex, Ian and Alec Rich discuss three major Citywire RIA exclusives: Alec’s scoop on a flood of exits from Raymond James’s custody unit, Ian’s discovery that Hightower founder Elliot Weissbluth is returning to the wealth business and a new feature highlighting the fastest-growing RIAs under $1bn in assets.

Alex Steger, Ian Wenik and Alec Rich do a deep dive into one of Citywire’s biggest projects: 50 Growers Across America. The trio discuss how they identified the fastest-growing RIAs in the country, how those firms beat the competition and their relationships with institutional investors.