Samantha Albert, ASA, senior financial analyst, has earned the right to use the accredited in business valuation (ABV).
Samantha Albert, ASA, senior financial analyst, has earned the right to use the accredited in business valuation (ABV).
Alternative asset managers have outperformed all other investment manager sectors in the RIA post-pandemic rebound. According to Institutional Investor, eight of the world’s ten largest investment management firms by market capital are now alternative asset managers. In the past month alone, three deal announcements of alternative asset managers by larger, traditional asset management firms and diversified financial institutions suggest the sector remains bullish.
In this week’s post, we discuss these three deals and determine several driving factors in investor demand for alternative assets and for alternative asset management firms.
Rivian Automotive has been in the news a lot recently given its eye-popping IPO. Ford has invested in Rivian and until recently was planning to jointly develop an EV. In this week’s post, we feature a recently published piece from our Family Business Director blog about Ford’s decision to invest in Rivian from Ford’s perspective.
For most of us, Thanksgiving is a time to disregard normal dietary restraint in the company of extended family members that one rarely sees. For some enterprising families, however, Thanksgiving quickly devolves from a Rockwellian family gathering to a Costanza-style airing of grievances. So, in the holiday spirit, we offer this list of the top ten questions not to ask at Thanksgiving dinner. If you have trouble distinguishing between the board room and the dining room, this list is for you.
Headlines persist describing inventory shortages, record transaction prices, record profitability, and predictions for when conditions will return to normal. How do we make sense of all of it? What factors are contributing to the current conditions? Like the larger automotive industry as a whole, conditions can be described as the best of times and the worst of times, or feast or famine. Interpretation of the conditions can differ depending on the perspective of the consumer or the auto dealer.
In this weeks’ blog, we offer commentary on the status of the used vehicle market and re-examine used vehicle metrics through third quarter data. We also discuss how we got here and where we are headed.
Following Rivian’s recent IPO, the Ford Motor Company’s $1 billion investment in the electric vehicle startup is now worth about $18 billion. With this investment representing more than 20% of Ford’s total equity market capitalization, it raises some interesting questions for family business directors contemplating the role of diversification within their businesses and families. In this week’s post, we consider the what, who, and why of diversification.
We’re often asked by clients what the range of multiples for RIAs is in the current market. At any given time, the range can be quite wide between the least attractive firms and the most attractive firms. The factors that affect where a firm falls within that range include the firm’s margin, scale, growth rate of new client assets, effective realized fees, personnel, geographic market, firm culture, and client demographics (among others). In this post, we focus on the client demographics factor, explain how buyers view client demographics, and explore steps some firms are taking to reach a broader client base.
Zachary Barber, CPA, has earned the Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) credential, demonstrating expertise in business valuation.
The recent turmoil engulfing the Rogers family, controlling shareholders of the $20 billion Canadian wireless communications and media conglomerate Rogers Communication, piqued our interest. What can public family strife affecting the Rogers family teach us? Well, quite a bit. In this post, we summarize the family drama and provide three strategies to keep in mind to stave off harsh family infighting that can, ultimately, bleed over into your company’s ability to operate effectively.
A couple of times a week, we get calls from someone we’ve never met saying they’d like to talk with us about their RIA acquisition strategy. About half are RIAs or trustcos looking for expansion, and the other half are private equity or family offices. Very few are calling because they have a particular target in mind, fewer still have begun the process of negotiating with a potentially interested seller.
If your acquisition strategy these days is starting from scratch, you’re in a tough spot. There’s nothing on the lot, and what is available looks expensive. That doesn’t mean you should give up, though. In this post we offer some practical tips to pursue an acquisition strategy in this market environment, as well as the markets to follow.
October 2021 SAAR was just shy of 13.0 million, as new light vehicle sales saw their first month-to-month gain since April. The October SAAR is up 6.3% from last month but remains 20.8% lower than last October. Auto dealers began the month with record low inventory levels of 972,000 units, and low inventories continue to keep car buying activity constrained.
Four Mercer Capital professionals are on the agenda to speak at the 2021 AICPA & CIMA Forensic & Valuation Services Conference a live online event held in Las Vegas, NV on November 8-10, 2021.
In last week’s blog, we wrote about attending some of the Tennessee Automotive Association meetings and explored the buy/sell considerations discussed there.
This week, we discuss another highlighted topic: the federal legislation that NADA is prioritizing and how that legislation could impact your dealership’s operations.
Despite our best efforts, having four kids in the house means that we are a net candy importer over the Halloween weekend. Staring at the piles of candy in our house this morning brought to mind several recent conversations we’ve had with clients and prospects. The topic of those conversations was “lazy” capital. In this post we discuss where lazy capital comes from, what its consequences are, and how to get rid of it.
Over the last year, alternative asset managers have bested the market and most other categories of investment management firms by a considerable margin. Favorable market conditions, heightened volatility, strong investment returns, and growing interest from institutional investors are the primary drivers behind the sector’s recent rally. Before this uptick, many alternative asset managers had struggled over the last several years.
In this post, we give an overview of the investment management history and summarize what the recent improving performance of the alt asset sector could mean for the industry.
Bryce Erickson, Atticus Frank, and Chris Mercer to speak at the 2021 MNCPA Business Valuation Conference virtual event on November 1, 2021. Topics include “Advanced Valuation in Gift and Estate Tax” and “Hot Topics in Valuation.”
Travis Harms, CFA,CPA/ABV will discuss “Why Does Your Family Business Have More Than One Value?” in the October 29th session of Family Business Magazine’s Lunch & Learn Webinar Series.
We recently attended a series of district meetings sponsored by a state auto dealer association. The topic on everyone’s mind was transactions. Because potential transactions seem to be top of mind for so many dealers, this post focuses on that. Because Halloween is right around the corner, we offer guidance about how to think about and structure a transaction in the form of Treats (what is true) as well as Tricks (what is not). We hope you enjoy the post and Happy Halloween!
Despite the dip in the second quarter of 2021, RIA M&A activity continues to reach record highs putting the sector on track for its ninth consecutive year of record annual deal volume.
As we discussed last quarter, the same three demand drivers were persistent throughout the third quarter. While fee pressure in the asset management space and a lack of succession planning by many wealth managers continues to drive consolidation, looming proposals to increase the capital gains tax rate has accelerated some M&A activity in the short-term as sellers seek to realize gains at current rates.
Increased funding availability in the space has further propelled deal activity as acquisitions by consolidators and direct private equity investments increased significantly as a percentage of total deals during the recent quarter. What does this mean for your RIA firm? Read this post to find out.
The most common valuation-related family business disputes we see in our practice relate to measuring value for buy-sell agreements. Far too often, buy-sell agreements include valuation provisions that appear designed to promote strife, incur needless expense, and increase the likelihood of intra-family litigation. The ubiquity of valuation provisions in buy-sell agreements that do not work is striking.
In this post, we explain the top five causes of valuation process failure, and determine that there is a better way in which a valuation process for a buy-sell agreement can lead to reasonable resolutions.
Matthew Crow, ASA, CFA will participate in a panel discussion on “Valuation and Other Considerations Due to COVID:
Past, Present & Future” at the 2021 American Society of Appraisers (ASA) International Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada on October 25.
Karolina Calhoun, CPA/ABV/CFF, vice president, is speaking at the Society of Louisana CPAs two-day Forensic, Litigation & Valuation Services (FLVS) Conference on October 21, 2021-October 22, 2021. Karolina’s topic is “Top 10 Critical Issues in Valuations for Divorce.”
My family and I have been out at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs for a work conference. Since we were going to a nice resort and conference center, we decided to parlay the weekend into a family business meeting. The meaning of the family business impacts the three key legs of the family business stool: dividend policy, capital investment, and financing decisions. In this post, we detail how we thought about each of the three legs.
RIA stocks saw mixed performance during the third quarter amidst volatile performance in the broader market. In September, the S&P 500 had its worst month since March 2020, and many publicly traded asset and wealth management stocks followed suit.
In this week’s post, we illustrate what this means for your RIA and give a prediction on the outlook of the RIA industry.