Bahnsen Group agrees to add $1.1 billion Hightower Naples practice under its brand

The Bahnsen Group said Tuesday it has agreed to add a $1.1 billion Hightower Advisors practice in Naples, Florida, and will put the Bahnsen name on the office when the deal closes at the end of the year. It is the first Hightower team Bahnsen has brought under its own brand, and David Bahnsen says it won't be the last. "One of our objectives in becoming a flagship franchise hub at Hightower is to open up our brand and mousetrap for other Hightower teams to join," he wrote in an email, calling Naples "a perfect first acquisition for us."

Hightower, backed by private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners, lists 648 advisors and $353.7 billion in assets under management on its website, and the firm has spent the year steering them toward centralized structures. In August, chief executive Larry Restieri said he expects around 80% of Hightower's advisors eventually to operate under a centralized model, whether through the Signature Wealth division or a "flagship franchise" such as Bahnsen. The Naples deal, brand change included, is what that pitch looks like when it lands.

The transaction follows Hightower's September 30 close on its purchase of The Bahnsen Group, which manages around $10.5 billion and had been one of the largest practices on the platform. Bahnsen runs roughly 100 advisors across 13 locations, and Naples will be its second Florida office. David Emma and Mark Masterson, who lead the Naples practice, joined Hightower in 2011 from Merrill Lynch and serve around 100 families.

If four in five advisors end up inside Signature Wealth or a franchise hub, the natural buyer for a practice that wants out becomes a larger team on the same platform rather than an outside consolidator, which likely shifts who sets the price and how much of it arrives after the close. Consolidators can buy a book; holding on to the advisors who run it is the harder purchase. Restieri's projection also narrows the outside option, since a lift-out check has to cover what an advisor gives up in ownership to take it.

Bahnsen says the Naples transaction won't be the last acquisition. The test for the rest of Hightower's advisors is whether the next one is another platform team, and whether terms are ever laid out for the people weighing the same choice.