Lightyear Capital, a New York-based private equity firm, has completed its acquisition of Financial Network Investment, based in El Segundo, California, Multi-Financial Securities, based in Denver, Colorado, and PrimeVest Financial Services, based in St. Cloud, Minnesota, via an affiliate of Lightyear Fund II.
The acquisition includes the holding company and back-office shared services supporting the broker dealers, which collectively did business as ING Advisors Network.
Lightyear previously announced a definitive agreement to acquire these broker dealers on 3 November 2009. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The acquired broker-dealers will be re-branded with the new corporate name, Cetera Financial Group.
Valerie Brown will become chief executive officer of Cetera. Lightyear chairman and chief executive Donald B. Marron (pictured) will become chairman of Cetera’s board of directors, and managing directors Mark Vassallo and Stewart Gross will also join Cetera’s board.
Cetera will be headquartered in El Segundo, California.
“We are extremely excited to add Cetera to our portfolio of high quality, market-leading companies in the financial services space,” says Marron. “We remain convinced that the independent, advisory-based model will benefit in today’s market environment and are excited about the combination of Cetera’s strong management team and Lightyear’s proven track record of success in the broker-dealer space. There is tremendous opportunity to grow and expand this business, and we look forward to working closely with Valerie Brown and her team to add additional advisors and increase our market share.”
Financial Network, Multi-Financial, and PrimeVest are three of the four broker-dealers that operated under the umbrella of ING Advisors Network.
Financial Network serves both independent advisers and financial institutions; Multi-Financial serves independents exclusively; and PrimeVest is dedicated to financial institutions.
Cetera has approximately USD75bn of assets under administration as of 31 December 2009. All three firms will maintain the same names.
“Lightyear is the perfect partner for Cetera,” says Brown. “Don and his team have great insights into our business. They believe in our model, and they are committed to investing in the technology, infrastructure and talent needed to expand. We’re poised for growth and we look forward to doing great things together.”
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett represented Lightyear in the transaction.
