Merit Financial Advisors, a Georgia-based firm with $12 billion in managed assets, is expanding its Pennsylvania presence by acquiring the $739 million firm Zimmerman Investment Management & Planning. The deal will establish Merit’s fourth office in the Keystone State.
Zimmerman Investment Management & Planning is based in New Cumberland, outside of Harrisburg, in Central Pennsylvania. The firm specializes in working with the region’s state employees and retirees on investment needs and retirement and estate planning.
As part of the deal, the firm’s President and Investment Advisor Representative Curt Zimmerman will become a partner and wealth manager at Merit; his team will join him in the transition. Zimmerman said he was thrilled to take the firm “to the next level of growth.”
Merit has been on an acquisition spree in recent weeks. In December, it acquired Roth Asset Management, a $773 million firm based in Lake Oswego, Ore., which boosted its presence in the Pacific Northwest. Earlier in the month, Merit added Trinity Financial Partners, a female-owned firm based in Berwyn, Pa., managing about $603 million in client assets.
The Atlanta-based Merit has approximately 40 offices nationwide, and the Zimmerman acquisition marks the firm’s 31st deal since it sold a minority stake to private equity firm Wealth Partners Capital Group in December 2020; the PE firm partnered with several strategic investors led by HGGC’s Aspire Holdings platform.
In late July, Merit Financial disaffiliated from LPL and later moved its business to Purshe Kaplan Sterling Investments.
The move came after an LPL July earnings call in which then-LPL CEO Dan Arnold said several office of supervisory jurisdiction firms were “strategically misaligned” with the firm’s mission and model. WealthManagement.com reported earlier this month that Wealth Enhancement Group was the other of these firms.
Earlier this year, Brian Andrew joined Merit as its chief investment officer from his previous role at Johnson Investment Group. Samantha Allen, a former senior vice president of integrated marketing at the Carson Group, announced last month she was joining Merit as executive vice president of marketing.