A new investor has bought a stake in the RIA, which has made a number of acquisitions in recent years to boost its footprint and AuM.

Oak Hill Capital is buying an equity stake in national US-registered investment advisor Mercer Advisors, the $16.5 billion firm that has bought a number of wealth managers in recent months.

The stake will be bought from the existing owners Genstar Capital and Lovell Minnick Partners, Mercer said in a statement today.

Denver-based Mercer, operating for almost 35 years and now with 44 offices, has grown in AuM from $5.7 billion in 2015 – when its current owners took their stakes - to its $16.5 billion today. Those three-and-a-half years also saw Mercer Advisors add to its referral relationships with Charles Schwab, E*TRADE, Fidelity Investments, and TD Ameritrade. During that time, Mercer has also bought 23 firms.

“Our future is even brighter with Oak Hill being added as a strategic investor. Key to our process in selecting Oak Hill as our partner was the unique combination of cultural alignment and their expertise in supporting management teams leading growth and change,” Dave Welling, chief executive of Mercer Advisors, said.

Genstar will continue as investors. Lovell Minnick no longer retains a stake.

Goldman Sachs was lead financial advisor, Moelis & Company assisted as financial advisors, and Willkie Farr & Gallagher served as legal counsel to Mercer Advisors on the transaction. UBS served as financial advisor and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison served as legal counsel to Oak Hill Capital on the transaction.

A few days ago Mercer bought Sage Future Financial, another RIA located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It manages about $100 million in assets under management. In August, it bought Regent Wealth Management Group, a business with about $300 million of client assets. (The firm is located in Woodbridge, Connecticut.) In June, Mercer bought Jackson Financial Management, a firm based in Costa Mesa, California, which has about $510 million of assets under management.

The purchases continue a trend of busy M&A activity in the US wealth management space, with regulatory pressures rising, client expectations and a need for scale driving some consolidation and repositioning of businesses. Recent data from M&A advisory firm ECHELON Partners showed brisk merger and acquisition activity in recent months.

Among recent deals to highlight the M&A trend, Texas-based Kestra Financial, the platform for wealth managers, recently launched Bluespring Wealth Partners, a new business focused on buying firms in the space. The move came a few weeks after Kestra itself became majority-owned by private equity house Warburg Pincus. At the start of August, TA Associates, the private equity business, acquired Wealth Enhancement Group, a firm that oversaw more than $11.8 billion in client assets as at the end of June. The private equity house bought the equity stake owned by funds affiliated with Lightyear Capital LLC, TA Associates and Wealth Enhancement Group.