Mercer Global Advisors Inc. (“Mercer Advisors”), a national Registered Investment Adviser (RIA), today announced the acquisition of M.J. Smith and Associates, Inc., a respected wealth management firm located in Denver, Colorado. M.J. Smith serves approximately 490 households with assets under management (AUM) of approximately $910 million. Mark J. Smith (“Mark”), CFP®, CPA/PFS, CIMA® founded M.J. Smith in 1983 delivering full service financial planning and investment management services to their high net worth clientele. Mark will be joining Mercer Advisors along with his eleven staff members.
Mark founded M.J. Smith & Associates with one overarching goal: the genuine desire to help people. Over the years, that goal helped grow the firm from a one-person shop into a team of professionals dedicated to helping its four generations of clients achieve their financial hopes and dreams.
Mark Smith added, “Despite all of our growth and success, we knew we were at the place of needing to build a robust internal or external succession plan. We also understood that reaching true scale would require additional significant expenditure. The confluence of these forces drove me to reach out to Mercer Advisors. I met with David Barton, Mercer Advisors’ Vice Chairman who leads mergers and acquisitions. Over the following months he and I worked closely together to build the right transition strategy for me, for my staff, and my clients. I’m thrilled to be working with Mercer Advisors and taking advantage of their large presence with over 40+ locations, true scale with high division of labor, and adding family office services like in-house estate planning, tax return preparation, and corporate trustee services.”
Dave Barton, who led this transaction stated: “Mark and his team are high integrity, high quality planners that truly put their clients’ interest first. It’s not just some throw-away line in their Form ADV. Our cultural alignment is very high, sharing the same mission, vision and values and always putting our clients’ interests before our own. Mark has also built a large firm presenting a complex transaction involving many moving parts including adding a new custodian, addressing FINRA broker-deal operational aspects, to name a few. We were able to create a transition plan that accommodated his operational demands, as well as ensure his staff and clients were well taken care of – all of which were on Mark’s ‘must haves’ list. Mark also brings to us new best practices we intend to incorporate into our business too; we all improve, and our clients are the real winners.”
Dave Welling, Chief Executive Officer of Mercer Advisors, said, “Mark and the M.J. Smith team are well respected and add expertise and additional talent to our already large presence in the state of Colorado where combined with the M.J. Smith team we are entrusted with over $2 billion in client assets. Our strategic move of our company headquarters from California to Denver in 2018 was driven by a mission to support a nationwide footprint from a central location, as well as a tremendous interest in building out our presence in Colorado and surrounding states. The addition of M.J. Smith provides three strategic locations in Colorado including Denver, Denver Tech Center, Boulder and we are evaluating adding additional locations to better serve clients. We are delighted to work with the M.J. Smith team and look forward to serving their clients with expanded wealth management services for years to come.”
