The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation ("BNY") (NYSE: BK), a global financial services company, today announced BNY has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Archer Holdco, LLC ("Archer"), a leading technology-enabled service provider of managed account solutions to the asset and wealth management industry.
Archer provides asset and wealth managers with comprehensive middle- and back-office solutions to address the managed account needs of institutional, private wealth and retail investors. Through its fully integrated, cloud-based platform, Archer helps its clients to expand distribution, streamline operations, launch new investment products and deliver personalized outcomes to a broader market.
"Managed accounts are one of the fastest-growing investment vehicles in the asset management industry, enabling investment advisors and asset managers to offer customized portfolios to retail investors at scale," said Emily Portney, Global Head of Asset Servicing at BNY. "By combining Archer's market-leading capabilities with BNY's broader footprint and expertise, BNY will offer fully integrated, end-to-end retail managed account solutions across our entire platform."
With the integration of Archer's managed account solutions, capabilities and professional servicing team, BNY will enhance its enterprise platform to support retail managed accounts, a market that is projected to grow at a double-digit compound annual growth rate to over $8 trillion in assets over the next three years in the U.S.1
In addition to augmenting BNY's existing asset servicing capabilities for managed accounts, Archer will provide BNY Investments and BNY Pershing's Wove wealth platform for advisors with expanded distribution of model portfolios and access to Archer's multi-custodial network.
"Today's asset and wealth managers have a strong desire to create multi-asset solutions across a variety of products, along with direct indexing and tax optimized portfolios, to meet the needs of their distribution partners and investors," added Bryan Dori, President and CEO of Archer. "As a new addition to the BNY platform, Archer's expertise, capabilities and scale will be leveraged across all of BNY to help even more clients drive long-term growth for their businesses."
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2024, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Financial terms were not disclosed. The financial impact of the transaction is not expected to be material to BNY's earnings and its previously communicated outlook for capital returns.
BofA Securities served as financial advisor and Sullivan & Cromwell acted as legal counsel for BNY. Raymond James served as financial advisor and DLA Piper acted as legal counsel for Archer.
1According to Cerulli Inc, The Cerulli Report — U.S. Managed Accounts 2024: Strengthen and Scale Advisory Solutions, in reference to separate account and unified managed account program assets.