The wealth advisory business of asset management firm Salient Partners has acquired Houston-based Teton Strategic Investments, to offer selective private equity opportunities to high-net-worth clients.
The acquisition enhances the process around Salient's systematic evaluation and due diligence of PE offerings, and enables the firm to use its existing pipeline to secure new options that fit the needs of its clients.
In addition to vetting the deals for quality, Teton will bring new scale to Salient, granting access to deals that were previously inaccessible to many clients who lacked the millions of dollars required to participate. Now, Salient can pool clients' money into one vehicle with a much lower entry level per qualified purchaser.
"Partnering with Teton has helped us formalise a solution for clients who have long desired access to private equity deals that were out of reach for some clients due to high investment minimums," says John Blaisdell, chief executive officer of Salient. "We can now build a regular pipeline of vetted, quality deals and offer them to our wealth clients, matching their risk profiles and potential risk return character."
Michael Mithoff has served as president of Teton, which he founded in 2006 to manage his family's investment office as well as advise a number of other families in connection with portfolio allocation and management, with a particular emphasis on alternative investment strategies.
Teton is heavily focused in the energy and natural resources sector, and has additional experience in the technology, health sciences, growth capital/buyout, secondary and financial services sectors in previous and current PE offerings. It has more than USD175m in committed assets.
"I'm thrilled to be joining Salient and its team of wealth management professionals, and to be merging our knowledge, skill sets and deep relationships to identify and secure quality offerings for our client base," says Mithoff, who will be assuming the role of managing director and head of private investments. "With these forces combined, our wealth clients will have access to PE funds overseen by proven managers who are otherwise inaccessible."
Mithoff will be working closely with Lee Partridge, Salient chief investment officer, on the continued sourcing of PE transactions to meet Salient's wealth client needs building diversified portfolios.
"Teton brings an ideal service offering to our existing wealth advisory business, one that aligns with our objective of trying to source what we believe to be true alpha and help our clients meet a range of financial goals," says Partridge.
Salient expects to conduct roughly four to six deals a year, depending on the availability of quality opportunities.
