CI Financial buys Montreal-based wealth manager Coriel Capital

CI Financial Corp. is acquiring Montreal-based wealth management firm Coriel Capital Inc., the Toronto-based firm said on Thursday.

Founded in 2006, Coriel manages approximately $1.3 billion in client assets (as of June 30) for 14 Canadian families with an average client account size of over $90 million.

“The addition of Coriel expands CI’s presence in the ultra-high-net-worth market, where we are working to build the country’s premier platform,” said Kurt MacAlpine, CEO of CI Financial in a release announcing the acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

McAlpine said Coriel would be “a strong complement” to the firm’s CI Private Wealth and Northwood Family Office businesses.

Coriel’s key principals will remain with the business and roll a portion of their proceeds into CI Private Wealth Canada, CI said.

Coriel’s investment team is led by co-founders and partners Gisele Wilson and Alexandra Ryan, and partner Marjorie Skolnik.

“We expect this relationship to accelerate our growth and enhance our capabilities and the services we offer to our clients,” Wilson said in the release.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. Following the transaction, CI’s Canadian wealth management assets across all its advisory platforms will total approximately $83.9 billion, based on CI Financial’s reported assets at June 30.

In the second quarter, CI Financial paid down $1 billion of debt and directed $212 million toward mergers and acquisitions and earnout payments, and $229 million to share repurchases, it said in the earnings report released Thursday.

In May, CI Financial Corp. sold a 20% stake in its U.S. wealth management business to a group of institutional investors for $1.34 billion.

Second-quarter net income was $51.0 million, up from $30.0 million in the previous quarter but down from $156.2 million in the same quarter last year.

Total net revenue was $776.1 million in the quarter, up from $637.8 million in the previous quarter and up from $566.7 million in the same quarter last year.

Increased revenue in the quarter was driven by growth in the U.S. wealth management segment from acquisitions and from higher assets in Canadian wealth management, it said.

CI Financial completed the previously announced acquisitions of two U.S. registered investment advisor firms in the second quarter.

In July, CI acquired San Antonio-based Intercontinental Wealth Advisors, LLC with approximately $2.3 billion in clients assets. This month, CI Financial said it’s rebranding its U.S.-based CI Private Wealth business as Corient, the trade name for Corient Private Wealth LLC.

Client assets in the Canadian wealth management segment totaled $82.6 billion at the end of the second quarter, up from $81.6 billion at the end of the previous quarter and $74.1 billion at the end of the same quarter last year.

CI Financial said it had completed converting the assets held by clients of Aligned Capital Partners to its in-house CI Investment Services (CIIS) custody and clearing platform last month. After the conversion, CIIS administers over $24 billion in client assets.

“This conversion is expected to improve the service experience for Aligned advisors and the improved scale should help attract additional independent advisors,” MacAlpine said Thursday on the firm’s earnings call.

“Over time, we see a pathway to [a] $100-billion-plus custody business as we onboard CI Assante, CI Private Wealth Canada [and] Northwood, and further scale our third-party assets.”

CI’s board declared a $0.02 increase to its quarterly dividend to $0.20 per share.