Atlanta is the new front in the RIA roll-up war

MAI Capital Management has entered Atlanta through acquisition. The Cleveland RIA's purchase of Waypoint Wealth Counsel — a fee-only firm with roughly $490 million for more than 100 households — was reported Monday by InvestmentNews. Chairman and CEO Rick Buoncore described Atlanta as a market MAI has 'long viewed as strategically important.'

Waypoint is the kind of firm that makes a national roll-up interesting. Brad McGrew and Matthew Woods founded it in 2014 to serve affluent and ultra-high-net-worth entrepreneurs, business owners, executives and multigenerational families. McGrew's SEC record lists earlier registrations at Morgan Stanley and Citi. At $490 million across more than 100 households, the average account is at most $4.9 million — a client base suited to private-market conversations. Waypoint responded to that demand early, running two proprietary alternative investment funds for clients who wanted exposure beyond public equities.

MAI has not been shy about acquiring. It has signed more than 20 deals since January 2024. In June it added Dallas's Service Academy Capital Management to its Evoke ultra-high-net-worth platform and agreed to buy Saybrook Wealth Group, a Connecticut RIA with roughly $273 million in assets. The Atlanta deal reads differently from those tuck-ins. Woods pointed to the city's concentration of entrepreneurs and generational wealth as the draw — the client profile that now supports premium acquisition multiples.

Carlyle's money explains the timing. The private-equity firm took a controlling stake in the spring at a valuation topping $2.8 billion, and Buoncore said then that the capital would fund deals in Atlanta, Texas, Denver, Chicago and Boston. Atlanta is the first name on that list to close. Buoncore has described MAI as Carlyle's only controlling interest in wealth management, which leaves the platform with an open mandate. The remaining names on Buoncore's list — Texas, Denver, Chicago, Boston — still stand, and every Southeast deal that works keeps that list intact.

Two Southeast moves came in the same week. Cetera recruited a $420 million Commonwealth team in Durham, North Carolina. MAI bought Waypoint in Atlanta. Both are markets whose clients look like the future of advice: business owners approaching a sale, family offices accumulating assets, households whose tax, estate and trust needs run deeper than a portfolio. That mix supports the private-market product push and justifies a national platform's attention.

Waypoint's two proprietary funds make the deal a product acquisition as much as a client acquisition. PWD counted sixteen private-market fund launches in the past month, a pace that matches the rate of announced RIA deals. MAI gets a distribution-ready set of alternative funds to run through Evoke, and the founders stay on as Market Leaders. Evoke's family-office resources for tax, estate and lifestyle planning were the same appeal that led Service Academy to join in June.

That product push is also happening amid caution. PWD has reported on the first real liquidity test for semi-liquid private-market funds: a redemption scare at Partners Group and the highest private-credit stress since 2017 have allocators rereading fund terms. An Atlanta firm with its own alternative funds is now joined to a PE-backed platform at the very moment advisors are doing that rereading. The result will test both demand and structure.

The model has a familiar tension. Aggregators pay up for relationships that last, then need fee revenue from products and services to justify the entry price. Keeping Woods and McGrew in Atlanta addresses the first half; Carlyle's balance sheet funds the second. Whether that arithmetic holds will show up first in Atlanta.