Savant Wealth lands $270M stake from Hamilton Lane in top-tier fintech deal

What's the deal? Savant Wealth Management has secured a $270 million minority investment led by Hamilton Lane, letting early backer Cynosure PartnersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → offer liquidity to its original partners while staying invested. The Rockford, Illinois-based registered investment adviser (RIA) has grown to over $57 billion in client assets.

Why now? The move comes roughly 10 years after Cynosure's initial investment. "Ten years marked the right time for us to allow our original investors to take liquidity in what has been a great partnership with the entire Savant organization," said Keith Taylor, co-founder and managing director at Cynosure.

How it works: Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based Hamilton Lane was the sole investor in a continuation vehicle that keeps Westford, Massachusetts-based Cynosure invested. Kelso & Company will also remain a minority investor, while Savant employees stay the largest shareholder group. Campbell Lutyens advised Cynosure.

What's the endgame? Chief executive officer Brent Brodeski said Savant is over 25 times larger than when Cynosure invested a decade ago. In March, the RIA made its largest acquisition to date, a Massachusetts wealth manager with $3.9 billion in assets under management.

"It is difficult to find private investors that are truly long-term oriented and supportive of employee-owned organizations," Brodeski said. "We believe we are still in the early innings."

The signal: At $270 million, this ranks among the largest non-VC private placements in US fintech, sitting in the 97th percentile of 68 comparable deals. As Hamilton Lane's Keith Brittain put it, wealth management "continues to benefit from powerful secular tailwinds" — drawing steady flows of long-term private capital into employee-owned RIAs.

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