Registered investment advisory firms drove merger and acquisition activity in 2018, accounting for 87 of 95 transactions in the independent wealth management space, according to Fidelity's 2018 Wealth Management M&A Transaction Report. The 95 deals, including those in the independent broker dealer space, accounted for $563.4 billion in transactions. The total number of deals was down 13 percent from 2017, but the transacted assets more than doubled. Of the RIA transactions, 23 were worth more than $1 billion, accounting for 26 percent of the deals and 76 percent of the assets transacted—figures that point to an onset of increasingly larger transactions in the RIA space, according to the report. Last year was a seller's market in the RIA space, Fidelity says. Total AUM transacted between RIA firms was $109.4 billion. The majority of that activity was driven by strategic acquirers, which Fidelity defines as those firms that stake a financial interest for the purpose of enhancing growth and performance through guidance and operational support of acquired firms. The 10 largest RIA deals accounted for 60 percent of total AUM transacted among RIAs. Focus Financial, which went public last year, completed 23 deals in 2018, totaling $36.4 billion in AUM, or one-third of all RIA assets transacted. Focus now has 62 RIA partner firms in it portfolio, according to its website.8