Cetera Holdings has closed on its acquisition of Avantax for $1.2 billion, with shareholders cashing out at $26 a share, in keeping with an announcement. The deal takes Avantax non-public, and the tax-focused agency will function as a separate division inside Cetera. Avantax inventory will likely be de-listed from the Nasdaq.
Avantax introduced the settlement to promote to Cetera in September. The deal provides greater than 3,100 monetary advisors and over $82 billion in belongings to the dealer/supplier community. Shareholders voted to approve the merger final week.
“Partnering with Avantax is core to our progress technique and capitalizes on Avantax’s many capabilities that profit monetary professionals, associates and their purchasers,” mentioned Mike Durbin, CEO of Cetera Holdings, in a press release. “The Avantax neighborhood instantly builds upon Cetera’s tax and wealth administration capabilities and experience, complementing our established tax-centric Cetera Monetary Specialist staff, and supplies monetary professionals one other avenue for affiliation with Cetera. As well as, this acquisition establishes a strategic relationship between Cetera and Constancy, as Cetera expands additional right into a multi-custodial platform, enhancing our capabilities to ship the most recent instruments and sources to affiliated advisors.”
Along with voting to approve the merger, shareholders additionally agreed, by a large margin, that compensation “could also be paid or turn out to be payable to (Avantax’s) named govt officers that’s primarily based on, or in any other case pertains to, the merger.”
Earlier SEC filings indicated Avantax CEO Chris Walters, CFO and Treasurer Marc Mehlman and Chief Authorized Officer and Company Secretary Tabitha Bailey all deliberate to step down after the deal closed. Different filings indicated Walters may obtain a “golden parachute” of as much as $21.5 million with the finalization of the deal.
Avantax sprang from combining tax-focused dealer/sellers HD Vest and 1st World in 2019, resulting in a agency with 4,200 advisors and $67 billion in consumer belongings; by 2023, Avantax’s advisor depend shrunk to three,078 although its consumer asset whole grew to $84 billion, greater than half of which had been underneath administration.
In October, Avantax additionally revealed by way of SEC filings that it confronted a number of lawsuits from shareholders claiming the Cetera deal may shortchange shareholders and that the proxy assertion touting the deal omitted materials data.
The plaintiffs demanded the Cetera deal be placed on maintain till the disclosures had been made, together with data on managements’ conflicts of curiosity, post-employment agreements and a few monetary projections for Avantax.
Avantax denied that the extra disclosures had been legally required, however filed an amended regulatory assertion with the knowledge, “as a way to moot the unmeritorious disclosure claims, alleviate the prices, dangers and uncertainties inherent in litigation and supply extra data to its stockholders.”
