{"id":405652,"date":"2026-04-30T21:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/405652\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T21:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T21:48:13","slug":"hightower-forecasts-more-flagship-firms-after-bahnsen-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/405652\/","title":{"rendered":"Hightower Forecasts More \u201cFlagship\u201d Firms After Bahnsen Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hightower, one of the original registered investment advisor consolidators, is continuing to hone its \u201cHightower 3.0\u201d strategy to help its \u201cbest performers\u201d grow, according to CEO Larry Restieri.<\/p>\n

Restieri pointed to the recent news<\/a> that the firm would be fully acquiring one of its partner firms, The Bahnsen Group, as the start of what he called a \u201cfranchise\u201d model for Hightower\u2019s top-producing affiliates. Through the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter, the Bahnsen Group will be a beachhead for integrating other firms, adding to its brand name \u201cA Hightower Company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restieri said he expects Hightower to make similar moves in the future, while continuing to build out the new Hightower Signature Wealth RIA channel that he and his team have grown to more than $29 billion in client assets in a matter of months<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe realized some of the success we\u2019d had with Hightower Signature Wealth and how that model could work,\u201d Restieri said. \u201cAs I\u2019ve talked with [majority owner] THL and with the board, we\u2019ve had this view that, if we want to grow, we should double down on our winners. And why not put dollars behind some of our best performers?\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:Edelman-Mariner Trial Delayed Due to World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n

Restieri said David Bahnsen, who is on Hightower\u2019s board, was a natural fit to kick off the strategy. Bahnsen created the Newport Beach, Calif.-based firm from a Morgan Stanley lift-out in 2015, with eight team members and $600 million in assets under management. Since then, the Hightower affiliate has grown to $10 billion in client assets with 12 locations and 100 employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t see why he couldn\u2019t be $25 billion in the not-so-distant future if we partner with him in terms of his growth,\u201d Restieri said.<\/p>\n

The Move Toward Integrated Models<\/p>\n

The CEO is quick to note that Hightower continues to support and see a future for its network of independent, but affiliated RIAs. But he also sees Signature Wealth and the franchise model as increasingly attractive for advisors looking to leverage scale, resources and, eventually, succession options.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have a bunch of independent firms,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I could see a path where a strong majority of the firms were either Hightower Signature Wealth or one of these flagship brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corey Kupfer, founder of Kupfer, which works with breakaway advisors, said the RIA market as a whole is moving toward more integrated models.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are all kinds of PE money in the space, and eventually there is going to be an IPO,\u201d Kupfer said. \u201cPublic markets like models that are scaled and repeatable\u2014that is the context that everyone is swimming in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related:Marsh McLennan Agency to Acquire $1.6B Wealth, Retirement, Benefits Shop<\/a><\/p>\n

He said Hightower Signature Wealth, along with integrated franchises, makes sense. While the advisor-client relationship will remain unique, the organization will seek to achieve \u201cscale that can work at a repeatable level.\u201d<\/p>\n

The flagship model is a follow-up to Restieri\u2019s first major move, the launch of the Signature Wealth national brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of that strategy has been the creation of a unified wealth technology platform that offers in-house, proprietary options for advisors, with an open architecture that allows choice. That effort has been spearheaded by Randy Bullard, a former State Street executive whom Restieri hired in September<\/a>, and who recently told Wealth Management that Signature Wealth firms will start joining the platform this summer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe made a conscious decision to build a platform on a fresh tech stack,\u201d Restieri said of what the firm is calling Hightower One. \u201cThat has enabled us to move very quickly with some kind of new wealth tech to really advance what we\u2019re doing in terms of onboarding and client life-cycle management, and then what we\u2019re doing with the investment platform.\u201d<\/p>\n

One investment option for advisors will be to leverage institutional research and investment counsel from Hightower\u2019s affiliate,\u00a0NEPC<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Related:Corient Plans to Enter Canada Via Parent CI Financial\u2019s Wealth Firms<\/a><\/p>\n

Being Advisor Friendly<\/p>\n

Restieri took over as Hightower\u2019s third leader after Bob Oros, who scaled the firm through numerous acquisitions and deals, including the majority stake in NEPC. Restieri came from Goldman Sachs\u2019 Ayco, a role in which he also worked to integrate Goldman\u2019s acquisition of RIA United Capital, which it later sold<\/a>. The now RIA CEO said he learned lessons from that process that have informed how he and the team are approaching Hightower advisors.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly learned a lot about just the advisors and how to manage change at the advisor level, but also what\u2019s important to advisors and what\u2019s not as important to advisors,\u201d Restieri said. \u201cAs we embark on what we\u2019re doing with Hightower Signature Wealth, and with Hightower One, especially, I think we\u2019re trying to do it in a way that is as advisor-friendly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Attorney and consultant Kupfer said Hightower\u2019s strategy is similar to that of Focus Financial Partners, which, a few years ago,\u00a0began to consolidate<\/a>\ufeff\u00a0about 90 independent firms<\/a> into hubs. That direction was partly driven by Focus eventually failing to remain\u00a0<\/a>a publicly listed firm,\u00a0due in part to its lack of integration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public markets have made it very clear that the less integrated strategy is less attractive,\u201d he said. \u201cThere will always be alternatives out there that push against the consolidated model, but over time, they will likely be the outliers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hightower\u2019s majority owner, Thomas H. Lee, first invested in 2017. It went to market to sell its stake in 2024, only to pull back<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Restieri said THL has been \u201ca great partner\u201d and will \u201ccontinue to invest in the business.\u201d But he added that it\u2019s hard to say if, or when, there will be a change in ownership.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe capital markets will determine that, and our own growth path will determine that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For now, Hightower will continue to execute on its strategies, including considering firms that could be new flagships.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we could take some of them to the next level if we put the right dollars around marketing and strategy and help make them bigger than they ever thought they could be,\u201d Restieri said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hightower, one of the original registered investment advisor consolidators, is continuing to hone its \u201cHightower 3.0\u201d strategy to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-405652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}