Houlihan Lokey Agrees to Buy Chicago Boutique Waller Helms (1)

Houlihan Lokey Inc. agreed to buy Waller Helms Advisors, an investment bank that specializes in the insurance and asset-management industries.

Waller Helms’s roughly 50 financial professionals, including 13 managing directors, will join Houlihan’s financial-services group, Houlihan said in a statement Thursday. James Anderson, chief executive officer of Chicago-based Waller Helms, will become global co-head of Houlihan’s financial-services group.

“We’ve had these guys on our radar screen for a very long time,” Jeff Levine, head of Houlihan’s financial-services group, said in an interview. “It’s rare that you find an opportunity that is so synergistic and without a lot of ...