SCS Financial, a central “hub” in Focus Financial Partners’ ongoing consolidation strategy, has named Adrienne Penta as its new national head of wealth management.
SCS co-founder and CEO Tony Abbiati (also an executive vice president with Focus) said in a statement that Penta is a “talented and passionate” wealth executive.
“As national head of wealth management, Adrienne will strengthen our leadership team and play an important role in driving our strategy to meet the evolving needs of our clients,” Abbiati said.
Before joining SCS Financial, Penta spent over 15 years at the investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman. Penta led the formation of the firm’s Center for Women & Wealth, a subdivision dedicated to helping women clients form and maintain wealth. Before BBH, Penta was a trusts and estates attorney with the Boston-based law firm Choate Hall & Stewart. She started at SCS this week.
SCS is based in Boston and manages over $32 billion in assets as of last September. It’s one of five hub firms that Focus Financial intends to use to consolidate its wide array of existing firms under several entities.
The other hubs include The Colony Group, Kovitz Investment Group and Gelfand, Rennert and Feldman. The latter firm is also Focus’s “business management” hub, while SCS Financial is the firm’s “family office & outsourced chief investment officer” hub.
Earlier this week, Focus named the Toronto-based Cardinal Point Capital Management the fifth hub in its strategy. WealthManagement.com reported in late 2023 that the firm’s hub strategy would involve consolidating about 90 independently owned subsidiaries into a handful of large firms.
This revamped strategy was unveiled following Focus’s sale to private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice and the departure of the firm’s three founders, including former COO Rajini Kodialam, former M&A Head Lenny Chang, and CEO Rudy Adolf.
Focus is staffing its C-suite with the heads of these hub firms, including Kovtiz Group founder Mitch Kovitz, who became a vice chairman last year, and Fcous CEO Michael Nathanson, who previously led The Colony Group.
Focus has continued consolidating its partner firms, including merging The Colony Group with GW & Wade, a Massachusetts-based RIA with $10.4 billion in managed assets. Last year, Focus combined The Colony Group with partner firm Buckingham Strategic Wealth to create a $50.2 billion RIA.
In June, Focus shifted Connectus Wealth Advisers’ U.S.-based business lines into The Colony Group and Kovitz Investment Group Partners. In October, Kovitz acquired Fort Pitt Capital Group, a $5.9 billion Pittsburgh-based Focus partner firm. The deal boosted Kovitz’s assets to nearly $30 billion.
