Vice President Business Development

Focus sues former advisors over Mosaic name dispute. Patrick Donachie Focus Financial Partners is suing a team that left the firm to affiliate through Mariner's Independent platform, claiming their new moniker infringes on a trademarked name of a Focus subsidiary, with Focus claiming the "likelihood of confusion" is "overwhelming." Late last month, Mariner Independent onboarded three former Focus advisors: John Buckingham, Jason Clark and Christopher Quigley, and launched Mosaic Value Partners, with three other employees. The addition was the largest team added to the Mariner platform. Before the move, the trio had been with Focus Financial Partners' Kovitz Investment Group Partners since 2018. Kovitz joined and took on the Focus Partners Wealth brand earlier this year. According to Focus Financial's lawsuit against the new firm, Focus Partners Wealth also includes Mosaic Family Wealth Partners, a minority-owned and controlled network firm of Focus Financial. Focus claims the Mosaic team has operated since 2015, and manages about $1.6 billion in client assets. Mariner declined to comment for this story, and the firm is not named as a defendant in the suit. Mosaic Value Partners did not return a request for comment prior to publication. In the suit, Focus claims that it holds trademarks on the names Mosaic Family Wealth and Mosaic Family Office, as they pertain to financial planning services, with a pending patent for Mosaic Wealth, which it filed in April 2024, according to a copy of a status update on the patent application. Focus claims that during the trio's employment at Focus Partners Wealth, they "had direct exposure to the Mosaic brand and the services offered under the Mosaic marks." On April 7, Focus claims the trio formed Mosaic Value Partners with the California Secretary of State's office while still working at Focus Partners Wealth, and stopped working there on April 24. The same day, Focus claims they started working as Mosaic Value Partners, with "widespread" media coverage on April 28, which Focus claims "dramatically compounded" the harm to Focus by "deepening the likelihood of confusion between Defendant's firm and Mosaic's well-established brand." In the suit, Focus claimed that the new firm's name "appropriates the sole distinctive element of (Focus's) marks, 'Mosaic,' and appends only the generic, non-distinguishing words 'Value' and 'Partners.'" "The addition of generic or descriptive terms to a protected mark does not reduce the likelihood of confusion," the suit read.

Jump and Focus Financial Partners launch partnership to elevate advisor and business manager productivity Through power of AI. * home * posts * tech news * Jump and Focus Financial Partners launch partnership to elevate advisor and business manager productivity Through power of AI. Jump, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for financial advisors and other financial services providers, announced a strategic partnership with Focus Financial Partners ('Focus'), an interdependent partnership of wealth management, business management and related financial services firms that collectively advise more than $500 billion in assets. The collaboration empowers Focus's business divisions to streamline meeting workflows, turn client conversations into actionable insights and accelerate their use of AI-driven productivity tools. The partnership delivers immediate, high-impact value to Focus's advisory teams by reducing administrative burden and freeing up more time for meaningful client work. Jump's ability to integrate directly with CRM and other wealth tech tools should reduce meeting prep time, improve data quality and support more automated workflows. "Partnering with Focus is a powerful validation of our shared vision for the future of advisor intelligence," said Parker Ence, chief executive officer and co-founder of Jump. "Together, we're transforming meeting dialogue into structured, system-ready data that we are confident will expand advisor capacity, strengthen client relationships and drive smarter, more informed decisions across firms." Through this partnership, Focus's advisory teams can: * Spend more time with clients by reducing post-meeting administrative work * Turn conversations into clear next steps without manual note taking or data entry * Improve the consistency of client information across their teams * Rely on smoother, more organized workflows that cut down on tool-hopping "At Focus, our mission centers around clients and equipping our advisory teams with the capabilities and resources to deliver exceptional service to them," said Mark Israel, chief technology officer at Focus. "We believe our partnership with Jump will help our advisory teams spend more time providing quality advice to their clients, strengthen client relationships and allow our team to scale while providing a customized, holistic wealth offering to clients. At the end of the day, it's about delivering an elevated and more personalized experience for clients and the tools that help us get there." This announcement follows a year of significant momentum for Jump, including surpassing 20,000 advisors on its platform and securing notable partnerships with Osaic, LPL Financial, Cetera, eMoney, RightCapital and others - further advancing its mission to shape the future of advisor intelligence. The partnership with Jump underscores Focus's commitment to equipping its business divisions with technology that meaningfully improves efficiency and client service and sets a new expectation for what leading RIAs offer their advisors. To learn more about how Jump can benefit your firm, visit jump.ai.

'Sudden' succession plan at Focus Financial draws skepticism. Incoming Focus Financial Partners CEO Adam Birenbaum (left) and departing CEO Michael Nathanson Focus Financial says its latest CEO change was part of a succession plan, but the $520 billion RIA's transition gives the market only about seven weeks of public notice. As Focus Financial Partners implements its third CEO in three years, the RIA aggregator's "succession plan" is being questioned by some industry sources due to its abrupt timeline. On the afternoon of Friday, Dec. 12, Focus announced that Michael Nathanson, 58, will be leaving his role as CEO to become chairman effective Feb 1, 2026, with current 47-year-old president Adam Birenbaum named incoming CEO. The change marks a "succession plan designed by Mr. Nathanson in consultation with the Board as part of the company's long-term growth and leadership strategy," according to the press release from Focus, whose affiliates oversee a combined $520 billion in client assets. "When you have a succession plan, if there's an orderly transition intended then usually there's a communication plan around that out to stakeholders, and it's not as sudden. It's going to say, six months from now, whatever it is," said RIA industry lawyer Corey Kupfer. "The fact that it was executed now makes me believe something must have happened." Nathanson became CEO of Focus in April 2024, replacing interim CEO Dan Glaser. Glaser is an operating partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), which acquired Focus Financial in 2023 and saw founding chief executive Rudy Adolf depart Focus that same year. "At this time, we are focusing our efforts on implementing this transition, including communicating with our many team members and other stakeholders," a PR spokesperson for Focus Financial wrote to InvestmentNews on Monday. Nathanson previously was CEO of The Colony Group, an RIA acquired by Focus in 2012 that merged in 2024 with Buckingham Wealth Partners, a Focus affiliate led by Birenbaum. Both of those firms were rebranded under the Focus Partners Wealth consolidation announced earlier this year. Louis Diamond, CEO of advisor recruiting firm Diamond Consultants, called Focus's latest CEO switch a "huge surprise" while also sharing the industry's high regard for Birenbaum. "It seemed like having Michael Nathanson become CEO of Focus was a genius move. He was the poster child for Focus. He did one of their first deals, he was the exact success story of showing up with Focus with like a billion, do a bunch of M&A deals, build an insanely valuable enterprise, and then be at the helm for the next phase of growth," said Diamond. "Seeing this was definitely a big surprise because he hasn't been in the seat for that long." Kupfer adds that on the surface, it seemed Nathanson was executing the normal expectations private equity owners have for mega-RIAs they buy into. "They've been consolidating, they were creating these hubs," Kupfer said. "Everything that we've talked about in other transitions that PE wants firms to be doing, under Nathanson it seemed like Focus was on that path." Fellow private equity-backed mega-RIAs Hightower Advisors and Edelman Financial Engines both announced CEO changes in 2025. "Unlike the Edelman situation where there was this view that the market came back and said, from what we understand, that the organic growth rates need to be kicked up, I don't see any particular thing here that wasn't moving in the right direction in terms of what PE would want with Focus Financial," added Kupfer. "I think this is exactly the direction that CD&R has wanted Focus to move, and they moved that way under Nathanson." The Bluerock Private Real Estate Fund ended its first day of trading at $14.70 per share, a 39.7% decline from its value last week. After a record year for RIA M&A, Cohen says deal activity is poised to speed up as private equity-backed firms hit the exit phase of their investment cycle. Meanwhile, Alex David has also left Raymond James to become CEO of Equity Services Inc. Elsewhere, mega-RIA Mercer Advisors expanded in Idaho with a female-led boutique firm, while AssetMark adds another $3 billion in client assets. As generations of women come into their own amid the great wealth transfer, advisors who lean on empathy and language for trust-building are poised for a defining opportunity.