He Wasn’t Ready to Sell, Until …

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Todd Morgan said banks or other institutions interested in buying Bel Air Investment Advisors had been calling him. Several times a year. For several years.

Not interested.

But then another L.A. firm, Century City’s Luminous Capital Holdings, sold to a San Francisco bank for $125 million.

That got his attention.

So Morgan, Bel Air’s senior managing partner, called an investment banker and asked what kind of price his firm could command.

“When I heard about the Luminous deal, when I saw someone was stepping up to the plate and paying someone fairly, I thought maybe it was time to look,” he said. “When you see something like that, it’s a little bit of a wake-up call.”

Morgan and other partners decided last year to sell Bel Air to publicly traded Montreal asset management firm Fiera Capital Corp. for that magic number: $125 million.

It’s a marriage of firms with starkly different profiles – but both say the deal provides big opportunities for growth.

Until acquiring Bel Air and New York investment manager Wilkinson O’Grady & Co. late last year, Fiera had no operations outside of Canada and was mostly an institutional investment firm, managing money for pension funds, charities and other institutions.

Bel Air, which has just one office, manages money exclusively for the rich and famous: Clients need at least $20 million in investable assets to walk in the door. Morgan, who runs the firm, married actress Rosanna Arquette last year and the two pal around with the likes of Barbra Streisand.

Sylvain Brosseau, president of Fiera, said he wants to use Bel Air and Wilkinson not only to expand into the United States but also diversify Fiera’s business by adding more high-net-worth investors to its base of mostly institutional clients.

“We’ve built a diversified business model,” Brosseau said. “Wealth management is a good business on its own. And our view is that a more diversified business model will help you get through all kinds of periods that are good or bad over time.”

For Bel Air, being part of the much larger Fiera gives the firm a chance to move into new markets. Morgan said he wants to open offices in San Diego, San Francisco and Texas, and that Fiera can afford to help with that.

“The opportunities for expansion are much greater if we have a partner with deep pockets,” he said.

And this is the time to do it, he said. As the stock market booms, money is coming out of the bond market and low-interest accounts, creating opportunity for Bel Air and other money managers.

“The wealth management business has been tough for 10 years,” he said. “There’s been no growth. But now, the economy is going to new highs. There’s a tremendous amount of cash being loosened up to be invested with people like us.”