By Andrew Foerch, CityWire
A new M&A advisory firm has entered the RIA dealmaking arena.
Tyson Pettitt has launched Iron River Group in St. Petersburg, Fla. to provide buy- and sell-side transaction assistance to wealth management firms.
Pettitt was previously the vice president of mergers and acquisitions at Berger Financial, a roughly $2.5bn RIA based in Minneapolis. He joined the firm in 2018 when it was around $700m to help run and grow a Vermont-based practice called Bell Wealth Management, which Berger had acquired that year.
Eventually, when Berger did more out-of-state acquisitions, Pettitt said it became clear that he had brought a lot of the ‘secret sauce’ that made the Bell deal such a success. He began spending less time in Vermont and more time on the road closing deals, solving problems and scaling Berger’s acquisition targets. He ended up running acquisitions for Berger in four states and more than tripling the company’s AUM before exiting in November.
‘It’s been a really interesting ride because I’ve gone through it all,’ Pettitt told CityWire. ‘I’ve been the G2 advisor taking clients on. I’ve also been in the position of having to offload clients and hire and train somebody to take my spot. I’ve been through acquisitions that haven’t gone well and having to fix things after the fact. And then I’ve been through acquisitions where we set it up right from the beginning. And it’s amazingly straightforward — as long as you know what potholes to dodge.’
Of the decision to strike out on his own, Pettitt said ‘I wanted to do more.’
‘I did four deals last year and I felt like I was on autopilot a bit. I wanted to be able to help more people and I think there’s just a massive need for people getting advice in this space.’
In Iron River’s first year of business, Pettitt said he’ll focus on working with small, sub-$1bn RIAs. He said he has a few early buy-side clients for whom he’s helping flesh out M&A strategies — ‘ironing out their processes and handling pipeline management and sourcing’ — and a few selling firms lining up at his door, as well.
‘There’s a lot of firms that want to grow that have a great platform to grow, but just don’t have the ability to pay the right talent to come in and do it full time,’ he said. ‘If I can do it on more of a contingent basis for them, show them the right way to build and scale and set their firm up for success over the long run through inorganic growth.’
For now, Iron River is a one-man operation leaning heavily on outsourced vendors to fill administrative and marketing functions. But Pettitt said he hopes to hire two more staffers by the end of the year, including at least one more M&A advisor who can help lead client engagements.
And while he may start at the smaller end of the spectrum of RIA acquirers, Pettitt said his ambition is to be disruptive on a larger scale within the wealth management M&A ecosystem.
‘Getting more creative with transaction structure, I think, is where the business is going, and I think a lot of that’s going to happen in the smaller acquisition space,’ he said. ‘I want to be known as a thought leader in this space. And as that grows and as my brand awareness grows, I’m definitely going upmarket … but my goal is to make sure that I can do the absolute best thing for whoever my client is at the time.’
Originally published on CityWire by Andrew Foerch. This content has been republished with proper attribution.
