Hightower Signature Wealth tops $50B with $9B Altium addition

The $9 billion practice’s move into Hightower’s W-2 channel continues a string of internal conversions in a record-pace year for RIA M&A

Hightower Advisors has announced the addition of Altium Wealth, an affiliated practice managing more than $9 billion, into its Hightower Signature Wealth platform.

The deal pushes the firm’s W-2 advisory channel past $50 billion in assets, beyond the upper end of the $40 billion to $50 billion range Hightower’s leadership had set for the channel by year-end.

With Altium on board, HTSW now counts more than 175 advisors across upward of 45 locations nationwide, according to the Chicago-based firm. The addition significantly expands the platform’s presence in the Northeast.

Altium, founded in 2010, serves individuals, families and institutions from offices in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The 10-person investment team will take on a larger role inside Hightower One, the firm’s broader platform, working with advisors across the Hightower network on portfolio construction, complex asset transitions and ongoing investment management. The practice builds customized portfolios for clients with complicated finances, pairing asset allocation and risk management with attention to taxes and costs.

“Altium brings meaningful scale, an experienced advisory team and sophisticated investment capabilities to HTSW,” said Larry Restieri, chief executive of Hightower Advisors. “This expanded relationship reflects our vision for HTSW: bringing together established wealth management firms, preserving the qualities that have made them successful and creating opportunities to leverage their experience and capabilities across the broader organization.”

“Partnering with HTSW is a natural next step in our evolution,” said Jim Dowling, Altium’s founder and a partner at the firm. “This structure allows us to remain focused on the client relationships, investment discipline and entrepreneurial culture that define our practice while gaining additional resources to support our team and continued growth.”

Altium has been part of the Hightower network since 2022, when it took a stake in the Purchase, New York-based firm. In 2024, Hightower brokered Altium’s combination with Boston family wealth advisor Kimberly Clouse, which brought Altium’s assets to more than $6 billion at the time.

Hightower launched HTSW in October last year as its first national direct-to-consumer advisory practice. Dallas-based Frontier Investment Management, a $3.3 billion firm, was the first to join, and Restieri said at the time that the model would widen the range of RIAs Hightower could acquire.

Since then, the platform has grown through a mix of internal conversions and outside purchases. In March, the firm said it expected Signature Wealth to reach $40 billion to $50 billion by the end of 2026.

The pace picked up after the summer, with a spate of additions including Hightower moving the $1.6 billion Boston Hill Advisors into HTSW in September; the North Andover, Mass., firm had been a Hightower partner since 2023. Later that month, the mega-RIA announced HTSW’s third external acquisition of the year by agreeing to take in Hingham, Mass.-based Sandy Cove Advisors, which manages about $752 million.

Last month, HTSW absorbed Synergy Capital Solutions, a Bloomfield Hills, Mich., practice with about $1 billion that had been a Hightower partner since 2017.

Hightower’s strategy stands out in the latest industry tracking by Echelon Partners, which counted seven Hightower transactions in the third quarter that added about $10.1 billion in assets. That was only topped by Wealth Enhancement Group, which made nine deal announcements during the period.

Four of Hightower’s seven deals converted affiliated practices into the Signature Wealth channel, which Echelon read as a sign that the largest serial acquirers are shifting focus from aggregation to integration.

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