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Angeles Wealth Management, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based registered investment advisor with $2.7 billion in assets under management, has made its first acquisition, adding a firm that will seed and lead a new family office division for the firm.
Through the acquisition of XO Capital, Angeles Wealth is launching Angeles Family Office, offering services tailored to affluent families. XO Capital founder Adam Stern will be CEO of the family office division, and founder Jason Oclaray will be its president, according to an announcement made on Tuesday.
Jonathan Foster, president and CEO of Angeles Wealth, said he has a long-term relationship with the two founders and that the teams have been in discussions for a considerable time about a potential merger that would combine XO’s family office expertise with Angeles Wealth’s private and institutional wealth businesses.
“We’re a business that has historically been focused purely on organic growth but always been on the hunt for high-quality people to add to the venture,” Foster said. “If you look on the private client side, we deal with very wealthy families that are increasingly going to complex issues that are beyond managing the money.”
Stern and Oclaray founded XO Capital in 2021. The duo had 50/50 ownership of the firm and client assets of about $186 million, according to their most recent Form ADV. Angeles Wealth did not share details of the transaction.
Angeles Family Wealth will offer families with assets ranging in the hundreds of millions with investment management, tax and legal advice, customized financial reporting, cash-flow management, bill pay and other services.
Foster said it’s those other “special projects” for wealthy families that can be the most challenging, as well as the most exciting, for advisors working in the field. He gave examples of families that might need guidance on how to allocate their wealth to hundreds of different projects annually, or those starting a new business in a different state.
“There’s a hole in the market,” Foster said. “How do you serve these generationally wealthy families, some of whom have gotten wealthy just recently. … This is not the Walton family. They need things that are the right size for them.”
There is a push by other RIAs to either open dedicated family office divisions or acquire family office expertise as they seek to meet the needs of multi-generational wealth in the United States. In March, Prime Capital Financial, a $35 billion wealth and retirement asset manager, launched a dedicated family office division by acquiring an Austin, Texas-based firm. Last year, CI Financial’s Corient acquired a $10.4 billion multi-family office to join the firm.
Angeles Investment Advisors has been in operation since 2001, serving institutional clients, including endowments and foundations. Foster joined in 2011 to found its wealth division. He saw that as the client base grew, it was increasingly “dipping its toes” into family office needs.
On the XO Capital side, the firm was looking to join an RIA with greater scale and investment management capabilities that included quality private market options.
“Combining the wealth management capabilities of Angeles Wealth, the institutional investment resources of AIA, and XO’s family office platform creates a trifecta of high-end financial services,” Oclaray said in a statement.
Foster said the team has been ready to move on the deal for a while, but that the government shutdown last year delayed Securities and Exchange Commission approval. The pause did give the teams a chance to chat and get to know each other, he said.
“We’ve been sitting together, talking to each other,” he said. “We don’t have a synergy problem or an ego problem … this is a bet on the future. No one is retiring, no one is leaving. There’s a one-plus-one equals three-plus mentality.”
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