Mercer Acquires $1B, 22-Person Team with Tax Skills

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Mercer Global Advisors, a Denver-based registered investment advisor with approximately $90 billion in client assets, has acquired Glass Jacobson Wealth Advisors, an Owings Mills, Md.-based wealth management firm with around $1 billion in assets under management. 

The acquisition strengthens Mercer Advisors’ presence in the Baltimore and Washington D.C. region with the addition of a 22-person team managing more than 660 wealth clients. Mercer had acquired Hunt Valley, Md.-based RIA Tufton Capital Management earlier this year as it cleared 100 acquisitions since 2016.

Glass Jacobson was founded in 1962 as an accounting and tax firm, and it added wealth management services in 2001. That specialisation was a draw for Mercer, as was Glass Jacobson’s bench of wealth managers, which included second-generation advisors, said Ted Motheral, principal and M&A partner for Mercer.

“It’s a perfect deal for us,” Motheral said. “You have a fiduciary, financial team rooted in financial planning with really sophisticated tax practices as well a great young Gen 2 along with really strong principals at the top that have had distinguished careers.” 

The Baltimore-area RIA first came onto Mercer’s radar when team members met Glass Jacobson President and CEO John Dinkins at a conference, Motheral said. Glass Jacobson eventually hired investment bank MarshBerry, which is owned by Lincoln International, to see through the transaction.

Dinkins joined Glass Jacobson in 2002 from Ernst & Young and holds a minority stake along with five other members of the leadership team, according to data from ISS Market Intelligence. The firm had steadily grown AUM from about $477 billion in 2020 to $1 billion, and custodies mostly with Charles Schwab, with some client assets held with Fidelity Investments’ NFS, also according to ISS.

“Mercer Advisors shares our values, our fiduciary commitment, and our passion for empowering clients and our team,” Dinkins said in a statement.

Through the deal, Glass Jacobson partners are offered, with their closing payment, an election to take Mercer equity as part of their share. Second-generation advisors who are not partners will receive incentives, including inclusion in a bonus pool and a profit interest pool.

“We think it’s really important in our partnerships to not only reward the principals for their ownership and growth, but also to reward the Gen 2 that will continue growing the firm with some sort of equity,” Motheral said. 

The advisors will also gain access to the RIA’s family office services, including estate planning and investment management support.

Motheral said Mercer has had an interest in adding more tax and accounting services to the organization, both to provide clients with the services and as a referral channel for new wealth clients.  

“We are always looking at quality over quantity—if a firm has a tax practice it needs to make sense to us from a growth standpoint, from a culture standpoint,” he said. “But we have a lot of sophisticated clients who need sophisticated tax help …. We are looking at individual tax practices. We are looking at RIAs that have sophisticated tax practices. But it all comes down to fiduciaries who are bought into our culture.”

In November, Mercer announced it had acquired its first pure accounting and tax firm with the purchase of Los Angeles-based Beach Freeman Lim & Cleland. It had also acquired Singer Burke earlier this year, a $1.2 billion wealth management firm with a tax and accounting division focused on entertainment and creative professionals. 

2025 will be Mercer’s most active acquisition year, both by number of deals and acquired assets. The RIA's acquisition strategy was spearheaded by Dave Barton, the firm’s former president and CEO, who stepped down in 2017 to take on the role of vice chairman. 

Mercer hired Motheral in March from the Potomac Law Group, where he was a corporate and M&A partner. 

The RIA is majority-owned by Oak Hill Capital, Genstar Capital, Altas Partners, and GIC, a global institutional investor.