Chris Moore of Simon Quick Advisors doesn’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with accepting private equity capital to fuel growth plans.
But the managing partner says his firm hasn’t needed it yet, and he isn’t aware of any compelling reason why it might consider tapping private equity in the foreseeable future. For evidence of why Simon Quick can go it alone, Moore can point to its latest acquisition: Proquility, a registered investment advisory firm with strong concentrations of clients in Las Vegas and Naples, Florida, and nearly $400 million under management.
Like most of the firm’s deals, this one is being paid for mostly with borrowed money, along with ownership stakes in Simon Quick for Proquility employees. Moore said he can understand private equity’s appeal to firms that have struggled with growth or that need help with financing for younger advisors seeking to buy books of business from colleagues nearing retirement.
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But Simon Quick has managed to attain $8.8 billion in assets under administration — $6.7 billion of it under management — without such outside support. That’s not to say that Moore and his colleagues don’t field frequent inquiries from private equity suitors.
“A lot of these organizations have a kind of planned outreach program where it’s just a drip campaign, so to speak,” Moore said. “But we’re proud of our independence. We have no need for outside capital. At this point, we’re growing well above average, and we expect that to continue.”
Bucking the private equity trend
Simon Quick, which was founded in 2004 and has offices in New Jersey, New York, Colorado, Tennessee and Florida, is among the increasingly few firms bucking what’s become one of the most prominent trends in the RIA industry. Of the record-setting number of M&A deals logged in recent years, many are being put together by large so-called aggregators — almost all of which are backed by private equity.
The industry tracking firm DeVoe & Co. recently reported there were 75 transactions among registered advisors in the first three months of 2025, the highest for any first quarter going back to 2018. And 2024 saw a record-breaking 272 deals, according to DeVoe.
“Private equity-backed consolidators led the charge, executing transactions at an accelerated pace,” DeVoe reported.
DeVoe’s report provides a list of the top acquiring firms in the first three months of 2025, all of which have ties to private equity. They include Wealth Enhancement Group, which had six deals in the first quarter; CW Advisors and Merit Financial Advisors, with four deals each; and Bluespring Wealth Partners, EP Wealth and Mariner Wealth Advisors, each with three deals.
Such consolidators, which DeVoe defines as large firms driven mainly by the goal of pursuing growth through acquisitions, were responsible for 51% of the transactions in the first quarter. That was up from 44% of all deals in 2024.
Smaller RIA buyers like Simon Quick, meanwhile, were responsible for 33% of the deals in the first quarter, down from 36% for all of 2024.
“Consolidators have reasserted their dominance as buyers in the RIA space,” DeVoe wrote.
Small compared with some, but big enough for HNW clients
With less than $10 billion under administration, Simon Quick is distinctly smaller than the large aggregators that are sometimes in the same market for M&A deals. The serial acquirer Creative Planning, for instance, boasts more than $354 billion in assets under management or advisement, and Hightower Advisors, another large aggregator, has $168 billion under management.
Although being big isn’t an objective in itself for Moore, he said Simon Quick had to amass a sizable asset tally to appeal to the high net worth investors and families he described as “our core client base.” Most clients of the firm have between $5 million and $50 million in investable assets. Its latest acquisition, Proquility, specialized in working with the same type of client.
“There’s certainly a size at which the high net worth community might say we’re too small to want to work with you because we’re concerned that you don’t have infrastructure,” Moore said. “We’re concerned that you haven’t been around long enough. We’re concerned that your reputation isn’t established enough. I think, at this point, we’re well beyond all of those hurdles.”
Proquility was founded in 2020 by former Merrill advisor Andy Ferguson and is led by Ferguson and another ex-Merrill advisor, Patty Yeager. The firm’s name is an amalgamation of the words “professional” and “tranquility.”
Ferguson said in a statement about Simon Quick’s purchase deal that, “This was never about finding the biggest check — it was about finding the best home.”
“Our clients and team will have access to more robust services and increased support without sacrificing the personal attention they’ve always received,” Ferguson added.
Moore said Simon Quick’s current size has been achieved through a few carefully selected M&A deals, along with consistent inflows of new clients and advisor recruiting and training initiatives. The firm gained its current name in 2017 following a merger with a family office founded to preserve the wealth of former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon. It acquired Red Hook Management, a firm with $420 million in AUM, five years later.
Moore said one big driver of its most recent acquisition of Proquility was his and his colleagues’ desire to extend the firm’s geographic reach. Before the deal closed last week, Simon Quick had clients in more than 30 states but no real presence in Nevada, he said.
“This is a great opportunity for us to kind of expand our footprint across the country and build, continue to build the brand as really a national brand,” Moore said.
Why pursue M&A deals?
Surveys conducted by DeVoe and Co. list a desire to extend a firm’s geographic reach as one of the top reasons driving mergers and acquisitions. A yearning to move into new markets was cited as a top priority by nearly half of the respondents to DeVoe’s polls when asked why they might consider new M&A deals. The other drivers cited by potential acquirers included a desire for business growth (named by 85% of the respondents), to recruit (named by 65%) and to add services (39%).
Moore said Simon Quick has worked steadily to build itself into the type of firm that can provide the wide range of offerings most high net worth clients expect. Those include tax and estate planning, investing advice and access to alternative investments like private equity and private credit funds. Moore said Simon Quick’s size is also an advantage when it comes to working with alts.
“We’re big enough that we are meaningful enough for the largest players,” he said. “But we’re also, I think, small enough that we don’t need to get a certain amount of capital in order for us to make a difference for a smaller player, which gives our team a lot of flexibility.”
Moore said Simon Quick manages to preserve the feel of a smaller firm amid periods of growth through its ownership structure. Of the firm’s 90 employees, 32 now have equity stakes in Simon Quick. What’s more, they invest their own assets alongside their clients.’
“Of the $8-plus-billion in AUA, there’s close to $700 million that is our owners’ and our respective families’ capital,” Moore said. “We see that as a big differentiator, because our incentives are very much aligned.”
Why private equity may be right for some firms
Could private equity ever take a stake without transforming Simon Quick beyond recognition? Moore said he pegged the chances of bringing in a private equity owner as “unlikely.”
That’s not to say he has a knee-jerk aversion to private equity. For plenty of firms, there are no doubt more advantages than drawbacks to accepting capital from an outside owner.
“If there was an organization that was really struggling to grow and that needed, or that needed a succession plan to find or help exit a partner, I could see why private equity would make a lot of sense for them,” Moore said.
But as long as Simon Quick can continue growing through select acquisition deals like its purchase of Proquility, Moore sees no reason why it can’t keep going it alone.
“You know, I feel very fortunate,” he said. “We feel very fortunate that we have the flexibility that we do to do a transaction like this and bring in great people and the team that surrounds them and the clients that they’ve been working with for decades without having to bring on private equity capital to do it.”
— This article has been updated with information about Proquility.
