Veritable L.P. sells majority stake to Massachusetts firm

Veritable L.P., a Chester County investment firm that is among the largest of its kind in the nation, sold a majority stake to Affiliated Managers Group Inc., a Massachusetts firm with $338 billion under management through 27 boutique asset managers, including Friess Associates in Greenville, Del.

The value of the investment was not disclosed.

Veritable, which employs 85 and had $10.3 billion under management at the end of 2011 for 195 wealthy families, will continue operating out of its headquarters in a stone farmhouse in Willistown Township, founder Michael Stolper said Wednesday.

Stolper, 56, who started the firm as Stolper & Co. in 1986 when he left Kidder Peabody with $60 million under management for a dozen families, said the move was part of succession planning, allowing some of Veritable's 25 partners eventually to retire. "A great business shouldn't be finite. It should be able to go on," said Stolper, who remains Veritable's largest individual owner and signed a 10-year contract to continue as chief executive.

In a news release, John W. Copeland, president of AMG Wealth Partners L.P., an Affiliated subsidiary, said, "Veritable is an outstanding firm with a 25-year track record of providing unbiased, comprehensive advice and industry-leading investment performance to wealthy families."

Veritable is a registered investment adviser, meaning it gets paid only for advice, not for selling particular investments. It was the second-biggest such firm in the United States as of Sept. 30, according to Investment News.

In addition to firms such as Affiliated, Veritable considered institutional buyers, private-equity investors, and even borrowing against the company. All but Affiliated were eliminated as possibilities, for different reasons.

"Institutions, for the most part, they don't want to partner with you. They more or less want to absorb you. That was a nonstarter. That's not what I want to accomplish at this point in my career," Stolper said.

Under the deal with Affiliated, almost half the partners have a greater percentage stake in the firm than before because some of the larger owners sold more of their stakes, Stolper said. "Ownership is a tonic in a firm like this," he said.

Contact Harold Brubaker? at 215-854-4651 or hbrubaker@phillynews.com.