Euro Pacific Capital, the Newport Beach-based money management firm, has purchased the international-focused retail accounts of Roth Capital Partners, the Newport Beach-based investment bank.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Letters notifying the 1,700 Roth customers whose accounts will be transferred in the transaction began going out in mid-May.

The deal, which involves $100 million in accounts, brings assets under management at Euro Pacific to $350 million.

For Euro Pacific, the deal also removes one of the few firms in the region challenging it in the niche market that its founder, Peter Schiff, wants to dominate: running money invested in overseas markets by investors looking for safety, not risk.

Several Roth employees, including Kimberly Hardaker, a director with strong Pacific Rim experience, will join Euro Pacific as part of the deal.

"That's going to significantly broaden our regional coverage," said Chip Hanlon, Euro Pacific's chief operating officer.

Gordon Roth, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Roth Capital, said his company decided to sell the international brokerage business, which it acquired from South Coast Financial Securities in 1999, after its trade-clearing firm recently cut the services it offered overseas traders.

"The costs for continuing to service this business with (a new clearing firm) would have been much more costly," Roth said. Since the international business accounted for only 1 percent of Roth's revenues last year, he said, the company decided to sell to Euro Pacific.

The acquisition is Euro Pacific's second in a year and a half. Last year it acquired Unfunds, a Huntington Beach- based investment-advisory company.

But Schiff said the local acquisitions, which together with subsequent expansions have doubled head count at the company to 15 over the past year, weren't over.

"Maybe next we buy Pimco," he joked.

But Hanlon, who specializes in U.S. equities, says the firm's next priority will be "reminding people that we're experienced in the domestic arena, too."