Cetera in Talks to Buy Parts of Voya Financial Advisors

Before the financial crisis, the Cetera broker-dealers were owned by ING. The three BDs that constituted the ING Advisors Network — Financial Network, Multi-Financial and PrimeVest — were sold to Lightyear Capital in 2010, when the private equity firm was led by its founder Don Marron.

At the time of the sale, the ING Advisors Network included about 4,800 advisors with $75 billion in assets under administration. Its CEO was Valerie Brown, who moved to the renamed entity, Cetera Financial Group, after Lightyear bought it.  

In 2013, Cetera struck a deal in to buy Tower Square Securities and Walnut Street Securities, two BDs owned by insurer MetLife. That came on the heels of Cetera acquiring Genworth Financial Investment Services, which focused on tax and accounting professionals.

A year later, Lightyear Capital sold Cetera Financial Group to RCS Capital for $1.15 billion. The BDs involved in the sale were Cetera Advisors, Cetera Advisor Networks, Cetera Financial Institutions (doing business as Cetera Investment Services) and Cetera Financial Specialists.

Then in late 2014, RCS became entangled in accounting irregularities at a related real-estate investing company — American Realty Capital Properties — led by REIT developer Nicholas Schorsch and built RCS to manage his brokerage networks.

Genstar Capital bought a majority stake in Cetera in 2018 after the business became a stand alone entity, following the bankruptcy of its former parent company and the restructuring of its operations. At that point. it included two more BDs — First Allied Securities and Summit Brokerage Services.

In 2019, Cetera bought the broker-dealer and advisory-business assets of insurer Foresters Financial, which then included 500 independent advisors. 

See: Cetera Acquires $4B Affiliated Firm