Arax CFO Diego Galan will get expanded mandate as COO
Diego Galan, CFO and COO at Arax Investment Partners.
The RedBird-backed RIA aggregator is placing its finance chief’s expertise to good use as he takes cost of M&A, operations and expertise.
Arax, the wealth administration platform backed by RedBird Capital Partners, has introduced an expanded position for its CFO to match its broader ambitions for development.
On Tuesday, Arax Investment Partners introduced the appointment of its CFO Diego Galan into the place of chief working officer, a newly created tole on the agency.
The transfer offers Galan, who has run the agency’s funds since 2022, management of the operations, expertise, M&A and human assets features. He will retain his place as chief monetary officer.
Galan succeeds the earlier COO John O’Connor, who’s transferring to Arax’s Project Management Office to work on strategic initiatives throughout the New York-based agency.
The change places the agency’s dealmaking and the again workplace that absorbs these offers beneath one government. So far in 2026, Arax has counted at the very least seven acquisitions beneath its belt, and its wealth administration industry now oversees greater than $45 billion in consumer belongings.
“From the outset, he has performed a central position in constructing Arax into what it’s in the present day, with management that has prolonged effectively past finance,” Arax founder and chief government Haig Ariyan stated of Galan. “This appointment formalizes the broader position he has executed throughout the agency since day one.”
Galan described the brand new construction as a technique to coordinate and execute higher because the agency will get larger.
“We have super momentum and a rare alternative forward of us,” he stated. “As we proceed to scale, larger coordination throughout our core industry features will enable us to execute with the self-discipline and velocity our subsequent section of development requires.”
New COO brings mobile money and Wall Street expertise
Galan has shut to twenty years of expertise throughout monetary companies, technique, operations and expertise. Before Arax, he co-founded wealth management fintech Bento Engine and was its COO. Earlier, he held senior management roles at Raymond James and Deutsche Bank and labored as a marketing consultant at Boston Consulting Group.
Ariyan stated the 2 have labored collectively for a few years. Arax, which Ariyan based in 2022, makes what it calls strategic management investments in established RIAs and advisor groups. In follow, this implies it takes controlling stakes whereas accomplice corporations preserve operating their consumer relationships.
Arax’s dealmaking momentum
For Arax, the 2026 deal calendar started in February when it brought Cleveland-based GFP Private Wealth onto its platform. In March it added Omni Financial Advisory Group of Poughkeepsie, New York.
In June, Arax acquired Coral Gables, Florida-based Millares Asset Management a family-run wealth and tax follow with greater than three a long time of historical past. The subsequent month, it agreed to buy $3 billion RIA Transcend Capital Advisors in Madison, New Jersey, marking its biggest-ever acquisition.
An M&A snapshot by Berkshire Global Advisors counted 225 transactions involving RIAs with at the very least $100 million in belongings within the first half of 2026, up almost 40% from 162 a yr earlier.
Arax’s C-suite reset comes shortly after it inked a strategic partnership with KingsRock Advisors, an impartial world advisory agency. The deal revealed final week offers Arax shoppers entry to personal capital bourses companies – corresponding to capital elevating, structured financing and strategic transaction advisory – whereas on the similar time reinforcing the financial backing banking capabilities Arax already had.
“Our advisors have deep relationships with industry homeowners, and we see a major alternative to help them past their conventional wealth administration wants,” Ariyan stated.
