Pavilion Financial Corp., Winnipeg, Manitoba, will acquire the Chicago-based investment and retirement benefits consulting firm Plan Sponsor Advisors, said Daniel Friedman, president and chief operating officer of the Canadian financial services company.
Plan Sponsor Advisors' co-founders Jennifer Flodin and Donald Stone will join Pavilion and lead its defined contribution business.
Mr. Friedman declined to comment on the purchase price. The deal is expected to close June 20.
Ms. Flodin will be DC practice leader and senior consultant. Mr. Stone will be director, DC strategy and product development and senior consultant. Both will report to J. Keith Mote Jr., managing director of Pavilion Advisory Group, a unit of Pavilion Financial that offers institutional investment consulting to retirement plans, not-for-profit health-care systems, higher education endowments, and public and private foundations.
Plan Sponsor Advisors “will maintain its name on a co-branded basis with Pavilion over the near term with plans to assume the Pavilion Advisory Group name in the future,” said a Pavilion news release on Thursday.
Pavilion Financial has been expanding both organically and through acquisition, Mr. Friedman said in an interview. For retirement plans, Pavilion “is primarily focused much more on defined benefit plans,” he said. “Defined contribution has been a smaller part of our business. Plan Sponsor Advisors will definitely add (to the DC business) in terms of size and breadth and expertise.”
Mr. Friedman declined to discuss the size of Pavilion's current DC business, but the Pavilion news release said Plan Sponsor Advisors “advises on over US$22 billion in retirement plan assets.” More than 90% of the Chicago firm's revenue comes from DC consulting, the news release said.
In an interview, Ms. Flodin said Plan Sponsor Advisors had been looking to expand its resources and staff. The Pavilion transaction “was a way to be able to expand more rapidly than building it ourselves,” she said, adding that her firm had been contacted by several suitors in recent years.
The deal follows on the heels of Pavilion Financial's May 29 announcement that it would acquire the Sacramento, Calif.-based investment consulting firm LP Capital Advisors. In December 2011, Pavilion acquired Stratford Advisory Group, a Chicago-based institutional investment consultant.
