CI Financial continues US office consolidation

After announcing this month that it was moving to use a new brand name, Corient, for its U.S. wealth management unit, CI Financial Corp. said Thursday it was moving forward with a consolidation of separate offices in Boston, Chicago and Miami.

Earlier this year, Toronto-based CI said it was consolidating its registered investment advisor operations in New York, moving two firms into one new midtown Manhattan location.

It wasn't clear how many financial advisors will be affected by the office space realignment.

CI Financial, which now has $147 billion in U.S. RIA assets under management, has been one of the most active buyers of registered investment advisors in the United States the past few years, even as the market to buy RIAs has seen increased competition and higher valuations.

It's a common business practice for an active acquirer of firms like CI Financial to integrate and overhaul operations.

“We have a few different offices we are integrating kind of in parallel," said Kurt MacAlpine, CEO of Corient and CI Financial Corp., said Thursday morning during a conference call with analysts to discuss CI's second-quarter earnings. "We are upgrading and integrating in New York. We’re doing the same thing in Boston and Chicago, in addition to Miami."

"That will drag on as we’re in the process of the build-outs now and in the repositioning," MacAlpine added. "That will take a couple to a few quarters to call it a fully steady state."

CI is a relative newcomer to the U.S. wealth management and RIA market, first entering the U.S. RIA industry in 2020. Ever since, it’s been on an acquisition binge that has startled some RIA veterans.

And the company has been experiencing some changes. When CI Financial announced the sale of a 20% private ownership stake in CI Private Wealth in May, it also said its plans for an initial public offering of that business, now Corient, were still in the works but had been postponed.

Meanwhile, the company reported that business unit, the U.S. wealth segment, posted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, of $9.3 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $70 million, an increase of 48% in the quarter when compared to the same time last year.

CI Financial also disclosed two acquisitions that it's made since the end of June: Coriel Capital Inc., a women-owned ultra-high-net-worth wealth manager based in Montreal with $967 million in assets, and Intercontinental Wealth Advisors, a San Antonio, Texas-based RIA serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients with $1.7 billion of client assets.