$10B Employee-Owned Ferguson Wellman Makes First Acquisition

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Ferguson Wellman Capital Management, an employee-owned registered concern advisor with $10.3 cardinal successful lawsuit assets, announced this week that it had made its archetypal acquisition successful its 50-year past with determination steadfast Great Northern Asset Management. 

“They were a section RIA with a precise bully estimation and a bully acceptable with us,” Managing Director Steve Holwerda told Wealth Management. “They were looking for a larger level to connect to. They besides request immoderate continuity arsenic determination are immoderate pending retirements successful the future.”

Holwerda besides said the transaction was invaluable for Portland, Ore.-based Ferguson Wellman to spell done its archetypal acquisition and larn astir the process and owed diligence requirements. 

The RIA, which made Wealth Management’s RIA Edge 100 successful 2025, secured the woody with what amounted to an equity swap—though currency changed hands for taxation purposes—with Tami Oglesby, the managing main and president of Great Northern, according to Holwerda. 

Vancouver, Wash.-based Great Northern volition bring implicit $229 cardinal successful lawsuit assets and follow the Ferguson Wellman name. It volition beryllium Ferguson Wellman’s 2nd bureau successful Vancouver, a abbreviated region from Portland.

Oglesby founded the steadfast successful 2006 with John Ritchie, who passed distant successful 2023. The firm’s sanction originated from Ritchie’s household transportation to the railroad industry.

Ferguson Wellman, which has 67 employees, does not person outer investors and has nary plans to instrumentality extracurricular capital. A radical of partners acquired the steadfast successful 1997, and successful 2017, the squad of 5 chose not to merchantability the firm; instead, they initiated an interior buyout program. Today, 37 of its employees are stakeholders. 

“That has been a portion of our culture,” Holwerda said. “We structured the interior buyout astatine a discount to marketplace multiples, but it allows america to support the civilization we want, and it allows those selling to person a small spot much of a convenient exit—they are not obligated to enactment arsenic long.”

In the meantime, the steadfast has steadily added divisions and services, which person helped support integrated maturation channels. 

That included creating a dedicated household office, Octavia Group, for clients with assets of $10 cardinal oregon more, arsenic good arsenic a part called West Bearing Investments for clients with conscionable $1 cardinal successful investable assets. In 2025, it added property readying lawyer Steve Bell to enactment with its portfolio managers and their clients.