Where’s Marty Weinberg now?

After dipping his toe into the institutional advisory business with a pair of acquisitions over the last two-and-a-half years, Marty Weinberg is now all in.

The founder and former CEO of Assante Corp. has launched Winnipeg-based Pavilion Financial Corp., and like the late ’90s and early 2000s, he’s looking for opportunities south of the border.

Read: Weinberg’s new shop targets ultra HNW

This time around, instead of seeking mutual fund dealers, financial advisors and sports representation firms, he wants to challenge industry giants such as Mercer and Towers Watson in offering investment consulting to foundations, endowments, healthcare systems and pension plans.

The opportunities lie largely with small- to mid-sized firms having difficulties meeting the needs of clients, who have become more sophisticated and specialized since the 2008 meltdown, Weinberg says.

“We think we can build an employee-owned, self-sustaining institutional advisory business,” he says.

Read: Weinberg back on acquisition trail

The top 1% of players in the institutional advisory market are giants, such as Cambridge Associates. Then there are about 100 small to medium-sized firms with 10-to-30 people, Weinberg says.

Pavilion provides retainer services to clients. Compensation is by fixed fee or as a percentage of assets. They also do special project work for groups requiring a particular mandate, such as getting exposure to emerging markets.

Many small- and medium-sized plans can’t afford the services of larger providers, and this presents an opening, according to Dan Hallett, Windsor-based vice president of asset management at HighView Financial Group.

“I think Weinberg is on to something,” he says. These firms need better advice but the challenge is to get it at a price they can afford. That’s where a boutique advisory firm could swoop in, provide services more efficiently and gain market share, he says.

Based on Weinberg’s track record on both sides of the border, Hallett says he wouldn’t bet against him.

Weinberg led Assante on a multi-year acquisition spree that added more than two dozen companies to its stable. In 2003, CI Financial bought Assante for $846 million. He then oversaw the U.S. operations, called Loring Ward International, before divesting it in 2004.

Read: More changes on the way at Assante, from 2004

The groundwork for Pavilion’s plan was laid in Spring 2010 when it acquired Brockhouse Cooper, a Montreal-based investment consulting and securities trading firm that provided advice on more than $300 million in AUM in more than 50 countries.

Then, at the end of last year, Pavilion purchased Stratford Advisory Group, a Chicago-based investment advisory firm, for an undisclosed amount.

This fall, the two firms were renamed Pavilion Advisory Group. Together, they have more than $30 billion in assets under advisement and provide advisory and other services to clients with more than $400 billion of assets.

To complement the two companies, Pavilion has also launched a global macro-strategy business and a quantitative research group. It has also started introducing transition management services into the U.S.

Weinberg has made a point of surrounding himself with experts in the field. Pavilion recently hired Pierre Lapointe, a macro-economist from National Bank and Keith Mote, a former partner with Mercer Investment Consulting.

Russell Mason, CEO of Connecticut-based Investment Management Institute, a research and education organization for institutional investors and wealthy families, believes consulting is a growth industry. That’s because the complexity of global markets makes it very difficult for institutions to keep on top of strategies, products and services.

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For example, he says there are 5,500 equity and fixed income products in the U.S., 9,000 hedge funds, 2,000 private equity firms, 2,000 venture capital firms, and 2,000 funds of funds. In total, there are more than 250,000 investment products, a number that grows annually by about 5,000.

“If you take just the 5,000 new products coming out every year, that’s gridlock for many institutions,” Mason says.

Weinberg is quick to point out he’s not pursuing Assante 2.0.

“We believe that an employee-owned firm works better than a corporately-owned firm. The turnover is less, the dedication is there and the client advocacy is at its maximum,” he says.

“This isn’t about size like Assante was. In order to execute properly, we want to be the mid-sized firm with a giant firm’s ability to deliver services to its clients. The acquisition part is absolutely part of our strategy, but it’s not our primary focus,” he says.

Read: Boutique vs. bank battle rages on

Pavilion’s organic growth rate in 2011 was more than 60%. This year is shaping up to be strong, too, but because of the company’s focus on integration and rebranding, growth is expected to taper off to between 25% and 30%, Weinberg says.

The company has about 60 shareholders and 125 employees, including 60 in Montreal, 35 in Winnipeg, 25 in Chicago and a handful of others elsewhere.

The success of Pavilion will depend largely on Weinberg’s ability to buy up enough consulting firms to handle the workload, Mason says. He’ll also need to have a business development team.

“The one weakness consulting firms have had over the years is they’ve had very few staff members devoted to business development or sales,” he says.