Private-client group makes eighth acquisition in under five years. In its eighth wealth-management acquisition since late in 2000, Mellon Financial has agreed to buy City Capital. Atlanta-based City Capital, an asset manager with about $800 million in high-net-worth and institutional assets under management, will become part of Mellon’s Private Wealth Management group and bring Mellon’s Georgia-based private-client assets to about $2 billion.

The deal is expected to close by the end of this year. Other terms of the transaction weren’t made public.

“This agreement is another example of Mellon's growth strategy in action as we continue to invest in and expand our asset management businesses and, in particular, our wealth management business,” says Mellon Private Wealth Management president David Lamere.

Busy, busy

City Capital’s chairman Willis Dobbs sees the acquisition as a way to improve client service. “Mellon's exceptional resources will enable us to provide our clients with a deeper level of investment management capabilities," he says. “With Mellon's breadth of services and expertise in strategic asset allocation, alternative investments, and planned giving programs, to name a few areas, we'll see immediate benefits for our private and institutional clients.”

This isn’t the first time that Mellon’s private-client group has bought high-net-worth wallet share in Atlanta. The Boston-based group acquired the Arden Group in 2003. That deal brought $750 million in assets under management to Mellon’s private-client group. Mellon Private Wealth Management’s Atlanta-based president Jack Sawyer was a principal of Arden.

Claritas, a San Diego-based market research company, expects Atlanta’s population of millionaires to grow faster than that of any other urban center in the U.S. through the rest of the decade.

But Mellon has been acquisitive in other regions as well, especially on the West Coast. In the past five years it has nabbed the Trust Company of Washington and Safeco Trust in Seattle as well as Glendale-Calif.-based Van Deventer & Hoch. Since late 2000 it has also acquired Cleveland-based Weber Fulton & Felman, Las Vegas-based Paragon Asset Management and Providence, R.I.-based Providence Group Investment Advisory.

City Capital has been around for a while. Dobbs helped found it in 1984 as the private-client division of Atlanta Capital Management, and participated in a leadership buyout four years later.

Mellon’s Private Wealth Management group has 59 offices and $78 billion in client assets. –FWR

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