Deals & Moves: Corient Acquires RIA in Silicon Valley, Carson in Midwest

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This week, a fistful of wealthiness absorption CEOs championed their advisor recruiting and retention efforts connected quarterly net calls. 

Raymond James adjacent highlighted a caller reporting enactment revealing however overmuch they spent connected recruiting and retention successful their fiscal archetypal quarter. (It was up 22% year-over-year).

In the meantime, RIA roll-ups continued to denote acquisitions, ranging from firms with arsenic overmuch arsenic $766 cardinal successful AUM to those with arsenic small arsenic $77 million. But nary substance the size of the deal, the marketplace remains rife with life-changing transactions for the advisors involved.

Below are immoderate of the deals rounding retired the archetypal period of the year.

Corient, the fee-only registered concern advisor limb of Mubadala Capital-owned CI Financial, is expanding successful California, peculiarly successful Silicon Valley, with the summation of $766.7 cardinal Palo Alto Wealth Advisors.  

Corient, which is based successful Miami, is onboarding Palo Alto founders Ryan Schmidt and Nate Blair, on with different advisor, a portfolio manager and a manager of operations. 

The squad specializes successful moving with exertion professionals and their families, an country that Corient CEO Kurt MacAlpine said successful a connection already has “deep expertise” successful that, with Palo Alto Wealth adding to the extent of the practice.

RIA laminitis Schmidt said the woody with Corient allows the steadfast to “maintain our client-focused, fiduciary attack portion gaining entree to deeper expertise and broader capabilities—including tax, trust, and household bureau services—that meaningfully heighten however we tin service exertion entrepreneurs and their families.” 

Corient was among the large asset-hunting RIAs successful 2025, with aggregate $1 billion-plus acquisitions, including Stonehage Fleming, a multi-family bureau based successful Jersey, U.K., overseeing $175 cardinal successful assets, and Stanhope Capital Group, a London-based wealthiness manager with $40 cardinal successful lawsuit assets. Those deals are inactive pending finalization.

As of Dec. 31, Corient lists itself arsenic having much than 260 partners, implicit 1,300 employees and astir $218 cardinal successful assets nether absorption and advisement.

Carson Group, an Omaha, Neb.-based RIA that has grown to implicit $55 cardinal successful AUM, said it has acquired a spouse firm, Schlipman Wealth, based successful Quincy, Ill., with outer offices successful Overland Park, Kan., and Lake Ozark, Mo.