Apollon Holdings, a Mount Pleasant, S.C.-based wealth management firm with about $9 billion in assets under management, has merged in CIC Wealth, a Maryland-based RIA with about $900 million in advisory and brokerage assets. The deal was not structured as an acquisition, but rather a partnership that allows CIC to use Apollon’s back-office services.
Apollon and CIC first met in 2018 through a mutual partner, Merchant Investment Management, which owns a minority stake in both firms.
“CIC was, I think, the third or fourth investment that Merchant ever made in partnership that they had,” said Michael Dolberg, founding partner and CEO of Apollon. “We were the very next partnership after CIC. I’ve known them for almost as long as we’ve been an RIA. We’ve talked for a very long time, and so it was just super easy for us to come together because of that.”
Dolberg also said Apollon had wanted to add an office in the Washington, D.C. area. CIC has offices in Rockville, Md. and Owings Mills, Md.
CIC, which is led by President Michael Fein, CEO Ryan Wibberley and CCO Frank Cappadora, has brought over 12 team members in total, including eight advisors. They expect to wind down their RIA in November.
Fein said his team decided to pursue the partnership after realizing that they were good advisors but had nothing special to offer potential recruits.
“We had good systems in place for ourselves, and we just didn’t plug and play well,” he said.
They’ve joined Apollon Wealth Management, one of two Apollon RIAs. Both CIC and Apollon use PKS Investments for legacy trails, Schwab for custody and Orion for performance reporting. Apollon Wealth also uses Fidelity, Pershing and Raymond James. It also recently added Goldman Sachs Advisor Solutions.
The firm’s other RIA, Apollon Financial is also multi-custodial, but it uses LPL Financial as the broker/dealer and serves more traditional hybrid advisors. That firm uses LPL, Fidelity, and Schwab for custody.
So far this year, Apollon has added seven teams and 18 new advisors. The firm now has 180 employees, including 85 advisors. It has clients in all 50 states being served out of 30 offices. Dolberg expects to finish the year with about $10 billion in total assets.
In addition to CIC, Apollon Financial recently added Martin Beck from Granite Financial in Chicago, Fran Gutrich in Chicago and Jim McGowan in Pennsylvania. David Haggard, an advisor in Atlanta, joined Apollon Wealth. All four advisors had a combined $400 million in assets.
In some instances, Apollon will buy an RIA outright, as it recently did with the acquisition of DeHollander Financial Group over the summer. The company will do that when the principals of the firm are nearing retirement and are looking for a good home for their clients. With CIC, the owners have a much longer runway, so they are merging, and the firm can grow together. Apollon will also recruit new advisors into existing locations.
In May, Apollon hired Ryan Shanks, CEO and co-founder of FA Match, to lead its recruiting efforts as chief growth officer.
“Our model is a very healthy interdependence of what we do from a central infrastructure standpoint, so that our offices have a lot more time and capacity to go and deliver that Ritz-Carlton white-glove service,” Dolberg said. “And everybody comes in under one set of systems, processes, technology, which is, I think, a little bit different than some and very much the same as others.”