Wintrust Financial has a deal to acquire the U.S. asset management arm of European investment firm Rothschild & Co. for an undisclosed amount.
The pending acquisition, announced Tuesday, will add about $8 billion in assets under management to Wintrust-owned Great Lakes Advisors, bringing Great Lakes' assets to about $18.5 billion. Overall, Wintrust's wealth management unit will have more than $40 billion under management after the deal closes, which is expected early next year.
The deal came together after Wintrust approached Rothschild, said Tom Zidar, chaiman and CEO of Wintrust Wealth Management. The European firm, with dual offices in London and Paris, already had made known it didn't view its U.S. asset-management business as strategic, Mr. Zidar said.
And Wintrust had familiarity with Rothschild's U.S. unit, having hired a former executive, Dan Oshinskie, as chief investment officer for fundamental equity strategies at Great Lakes Advisors a few years ago, Mr. Zidar said.
"He's hired most of the people there," Mr. Zidar said. "We really have a good sense for what we're buying."
Wintrust will retain the Rothschild unit's Stamford, Conn., headquarters. That will give Wintrust Wealth Management a presence in the New York area, as well as its present locations in Tampa, Fla., and Chicago.
With more than $50 billion in assets, Rosemont, Illinois-based Wintrust is the largest commercial bank still based in the Chicago area. Over the past 15 years, it's grown via many acquisitions of community banks. Over the last three years, Wintrust's growth has been primarily organic.
This marks Wintrust's first acquisition of 2022. Last year, it made a single deal, acquiring Northbrook, Illinois-based insurance giant Allstate's business that lends to Allstate agents nationwide.
The Rothschild purchase is Wintrust's largest in the wealth management arena since 2002 when it bought brokerage Wayne Hummer Cos. That business is now branded as Wintrust. The buyout of Great Lakes Advisors occurred in 2011, and Wintrust held onto the Great Lakes name.
Wintrust is best known as a business lender and retail bank, but the Rothschild deal looks like it will vault the bank into the top 20 of money managers in the Chicago region.
