Here's the lowdown
Aprio acquired Plano-based Garner Asset Management effective November 2, giving its wealth group a Dallas-Fort Worth office.
Garner is a fee-only SEC-registered investment adviser founded in 1998, and founder Robert Garner is joining Aprio as a partner.
Aprio calls this its first standalone wealth acquisition and says its wealth business had about $6.1 billion in assets under advisement on September 30.
Aprio has spent years buying accounting and advisory firms. This deal is different.
The Top 20 firm bought a standalone wealth adviser, not another CPA office with a side business attached. Plano-based Garner Asset Management gives Aprio Wealth Management a base in Dallas-Fort Worth and a team focused on investment advice.
That makes the acquisition a test of a popular accounting-firm idea: clients want tax, estate, legal, accounting, and investment advice from people who talk to each other.
The idea sounds simple. Making five specialties feel like one service is not.
What Aprio bought
Aprio's announcement says the acquisition took effect November 2. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Garner is a fee-only registered investment adviser. That means the firm says clients pay it for advice instead of its advisers earning commissions for selling financial products.
Robert Garner founded the business in 1998. The firm works with high-net-worth families, retirees, people nearing retirement, and clients holding a large amount of one company's stock.
Garner is joining Aprio as a partner. His clients gain access to a much broader platform, including tax strategy, estate planning, legal work, accounting, and family-office services.
Aprio's existing Texas clients get the reverse. They now have a local wealth team in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Why the first standalone deal matters
Aprio says Garner is its first acquisition of a wealth firm on its own.
That detail shows where the growth plan is moving. An accounting firm can build wealth services by hiring advisers, buying a CPA firm that already owns an investment practice, or acquiring a registered investment adviser directly.
Aprio just chose the direct route.
Garner is the second registered investment adviser to join Aprio Wealth Management. Prism Financial Group joined in late 2025, but Aprio describes Garner as the first standalone wealth acquisition.
The wealth business reported about $6.1 billion in assets under advisement as of September 30. That is the company's measure of assets connected to its advisory relationships. It does not reveal Garner's share or the price Aprio paid.
No deal value means outsiders cannot calculate the revenue multiple or judge how much of the purchase price rests on future client retention. The strategic reason is easier to see than the economics.
Texas is becoming a larger piece of Aprio
Aprio entered Texas in December 2023 through a combination with Ridout Barrett & Co. in San Antonio and Austin.
The firm now says it has 150 team members in the state and offices in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Garner adds a dedicated wealth presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth market.
That local presence matters in financial planning. Investment accounts can be managed from almost anywhere, but retirement choices, business sales, estate plans, and concentrated stock positions often cross into tax and legal work.
Aprio wants those questions to stay inside one advisory system.
The accounting firm also brings scale. Aprio ranked No. 20 on Accounting Today's 2026 Top 100 Firms list, with $616 million in revenue, nearly 300 partners, and 3,170 employees across 37 offices. It received a private equity investment from Charlesbank Capital Partners in 2024.
Garner is smaller, specialized, and local. Aprio is betting that the combination can keep the personal relationship while adding more services behind it.
The money is in the handoff
Integrated advice becomes useful when one decision affects another.
A business owner selling a company may need investment planning for the proceeds, tax estimates for the sale, estate documents, and cash-flow advice. A retiree with a large stock position may need a diversification plan that accounts for capital gains and charitable giving.
If each specialist works alone, the client becomes the project manager. They carry facts from one meeting to another and hope the recommendations fit together.
Aprio's pitch is that one coordinated team can reduce that friction.
That can also deepen the client relationship and create recurring wealth-management revenue next to tax and advisory work. But it raises practical questions about who leads the relationship, how client information moves between teams, and where professional and regulatory boundaries sit.
A larger service menu is not the same as an integrated plan.
Integration is now the real deal
The acquisition announcement is the easy part. Client experience will decide whether the strategy works.
Aprio needs clear handoffs between Garner's advisers and its tax, legal, estate, and accounting specialists. It also needs to preserve the fee-only adviser's trust while connecting the team to a broader fee-based wealth platform and a private-equity-backed accounting firm.
Clients should know which legal entity provides each service, how each professional is paid, and when information or recommendations cross from one group to another.
Those details are where an integrated model becomes real or turns into a collection of referrals under one brand.
Garner gives Aprio a Dallas-Fort Worth wealth office and another path into clients' financial lives. The next question is whether those clients feel one coordinated team or simply see more names around the table.
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