narayan
Corient, the Miami-based fee-only registered investment advisor, has acquired Chicago-based Vivaldi Capital, an employee-owned wealth manager with $5.6 billion in assets under management. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2026.
The deal comes as Corient works on two large acquisitions it made last year that will see it grow to $450 billion in client assets once completed. The firm is the RIA arm of Toronto-based CI Financial Corp., which was taken private recently by Mubadala Capital, the asset management arm of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund.
Vivaldi was founded by David Sternberg and Randel Golden in 2012. Sternberg had previously founded Iron Partners, an alternative investment firm launched in 1999 and sold in 2007. Golden had been managing director for FGMK/Preservation Capital Partners and Mesirow Financial. The duo launched their RIA with a focus on private and alternative investing for clients, according to the firm’s website.
Sternberg, Golden, and other executives owned Vivaldi along with stakeholder First Trust Capital Partners, according to its most recent Form ADV. Vivaldi’s principals will become Corient partners upon the deal’s closing, according to the announcement.
Sternberg and Golden “share our conviction in the important role alternatives should play in ultra-high-net-worth portfolios, and we’re confident they will be a valuable addition to the Corient Partnership,” Kurt MacAlpine, founding partner and CEO of Corient, said in a statement.
He noted that the firm will be integrated into Corient’s “partnership” format, in which advisor teams collaborate across clients.
Corient was founded in 2020 as part of the then publicly-listed CI Financial. It now has more than 250 partners and over 1,400 employees managing about $227 billion in the U.S.
Last September, it announced deals to acquire U.K.-based firms Stonehage Fleming and Stanhope Capital Group, bringing an additional $220 billion in assets across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. It is still working to finalize those transactions.
Consolidation by firms such as Corient continues to drive the roughly $9.8 trillion in assets held by RIAs into the hands of the biggest players, according to a webinar held by consultancy Cerulli Associates on Wednesday.
According to the Boston-based firm, RIAs with more than $5 billion in assets make up just 2% of the market, but control 54% of assets.
Citywire had reported in October that Vivaldi was pursuing a sale.
