R&P will add 115 households and $130 million in assets to Abacus’ portfolio, giving the local firm approximately $3.8 billion in assets under management. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Abacus Wealth Partners is the product of a 2004 merger between Sherman Financial and Abacus Wealth Management.
Both firms had focused on “responsible” investing since the mid-1990s, according to Abacus co-founder and Chief Executive Brent Kessel, and had built on a greater focus on such investments over the years.
“As the impact investing world has gotten more and more sophisticated, what we have been able to offer has gotten more sophisticated,” Kessel said in an interview.
He added that having the ability to effectively channel client funds into investments that support an individual’s environmental, social and corporate governance, or ESG, goals has become a basic requirement for most wealth managers. Where Abacus stands apart, according to its CEO, is its proactive approach to impact investing.
“We don’t wait for the client to say, ‘Hey, I really care about the environment, how can I support that?’” Kessel said. “We proactively ask them questions about their values and make recommendations based on that.”
Kessel added that the degree to which a client’s portfolio focuses on ESG investments varies by individual although most opt to prioritize values-driven investing.
“For some clients, it’s just light ESG investing, but for most it is more than that,” he said. “You don’t have to give up your good returns just because something has a social and environmental benefit.”
R&P also focuses on socially conscious investing. Kessel said his firm had been aware of the San Francisco wealth manager for years and had previously floated the idea of an acquisition, but the idea was rejected at the time.
Then, last year, Kessel said, he met one of the firm’s eponymous co-founders, Rachel Robasciotti, at an impact investing event.
“We started talking and realized that we just had so many synergies between us,” he said. “It was a love-at-first sight type of thing. Within two or three months, we were clear that we wanted this (merger) to happen.”
Under the combination, R&P will be folded into Abacus’ wealth management business with its clients and assets transferring over to Abacus. R&P’s founders, Robasciotti and Maya Philipson, will step back from the firm, taking on relatively hands-off roles as director of advocacy engagement and strategic adviser, respectively.
The R&P founders will now focus most of their time on a separate firm they created, Adasina Social Capital, which aims to connect financial markets capital to racial, gender, economic and climate activist movements.
