Mercer Global Advisors has purchased a Los Angeles-based wealth manager and tax consultancy specializing in entertainment and creative professionals.
Denver-based Mercer, which oversees more than $83 billion in assets, will have Singer Burke’s RIA, SB Capital Management, and Singer Burke Zimmer & Kogan, an accounting, tax, business and financial consultancy, join its ultra-high-net-worth-focused Regis Group. That practice, which it acquired in 2022, is a specialized team within Mercer focused on clients with $25 million or more in investable assets, currently accounting for approximately $20 billion of the firm’s total assets.
“It’s the fastest growing part of our firm,” Mercer President Daniel Gourvitch said. “In the Regis Group, we have a number of specialties—private market investors, technology executives, specialists with business owners who are selling their business.”
Now, Singer Burke will bring expertise in working with media, entertainment and creative professionals to Mercer, which Gourvitch said will become a resource for advisors throughout the firm when working with such clients.
“It creates an anchor focused on creative professionals in the UHNW space, but also can help across all our segments,” he said.
Singer Burke was founded in 1972 by Sandy Singer and grew into a 60-person firm well-known in Hollywood as a wealth and tax management firm for industry professionals such as producers, writers, actors and composers. The firm is now led by partners Matthew Burke, Richard Singer (Sandy’s son), Elaina Kogan, Stephanie Connor Arkof and Amitha Harichandran.
The group was seeking a partner who would provide a “professional management team, enterprise-scale operations and technology, and a wider set of client services including estate planning,” according to the announcement.
Gourvitch said Mercer will also benefit from Singer Burke’s tax and business management side, as it will scale those services at Mercer for high-net-worth families.
“Mercer tax and estate has about 200 professionals in it,” he said. “This will deepen our bench, obviously, with UHNW clients and also add a set of specific management services applicable to the clients.”
Gourvitch joined Mercer in 2022 from BlackRock, where he was a managing director and global head of platform for its Aladdin business. He said one of the reasons he joined the RIA was to help build a wealth manager with the capabilities of a large, bank-owned firm, but with a fiduciary mindset.
“We have the boutique core of an RIA without the trade-offs,” he said.
Mercer is majority-owned by Oak Hill Capital, Genstar Capital, Altas Partners and GIC, a global institutional investor. Earlier this year, it hired Ted Motheral from the Potomac Law Group as principal, M&A partner development.
“We’ve added a premier team, in a key market, which strengthens our ability to deliver a comprehensive family office experience for today’s most successful families,” Motheral said in a statement.
Jim DiPisa of Dalphia Partners advised Singer Burke on the transaction.
