Perella Weinberg Buys Energy Investment Bank Tudor Pickering

HOUSTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - New York-based investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners LP said on Monday it would buy energy boutique bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt and Co, in a deal that boosts its scale and helps it expand into the oil and gas industry.

Terms of the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year, were not disclosed.

The combined company will have more than $12 billion in assets under management. Tudor, Pickering, Holt (TPH) will operate as a subsidiary of Perella Weinberg Partners and remain focused on the oil and gas sector.

The combination gives both banks crucial scale at a time when smaller M&A franchises are suffering under competition from larger peers. Increasingly, large banks with myriad services - including research, asset management and underwriting - have been favored in M&A deals due to the breadth of their services.

In TPH, Perella Weinberg is buying one of the preeminent energy banks in the United States, with deep connections across the shale oil patches.

"We believe TPH's strong suite of asset management strategies and solutions are poised to benefit from recovery in the energy market and well-suited to drive further growth and value for investors," Robert Steel, chief executive of Perella Weinberg, said in a statement.

Founded in 2004 as Pickering Energy Partners, Inc and merged in 2007 with Tudor Capital, the energy boutique was rebranded as Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co when Maynard Holt joined as co-president in December of 2007.

Perella Weinberg was founded in 2006 as an advisory and asset management firm when it raised over $1 billion from eleven investors.

Steel will continue as chief executive of Perella Weinberg, with Holt becoming chief executive of the TPH subsidiary. Bobby Tudor, who founded the eponymous company, will become TPH's chairman.

Alexandra Pruner, the finance chief of TPH, will become finance chief for the parent company Perella Weinberg, a promotion.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Bernadette Baum)