RIA Valuation Insights

A weekly update on issues important to the Investment Management industry

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RIA Valuation Insights


Call Reports

3Q17 Call Reports

As we do every quarter, we take a look at some of the earnings commentary of pacesetters in asset management to gain further insight into the challenges and opportunities developing in the industry.

Industry Trends

Options for Today’s Financial Advisors

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Ever since the Financial Crisis, wirehouse advisors have been pondering this question as the independent model continues to lure wealth managers from the big banks and brokerage firms.  This post discusses the various options that financial advisors (FAs) are faced with today and when it makes sense for them to stick around or do their own thing.

Practice Management Transactions

What Is My RIA Worth?

Of all the topics we cover in RIA Valuation Insights, the most popular concerns what an investment management firm is actually worth.  As a consequence, we thought it would be worthwhile to offer a webinar on the topic, and are planning to do so on Tuesday, October 3. 

Industry Trends

Recent Trends in Asset Management

This week we’re sharing some recent media on trends in asset management and the outlook for M&A activity.  Most industry observers foresee an uptick in asset manager deal-making as rising costs, asset outflows, and a heightened interest from consolidators incent many firms to pull the trigger on a sale or business combination with another RIA. 

Practice Management Transactions

An Example of Structuring Earn-outs for RIAs

If you’re considering an offer for your firm that includes earn-out consideration, think about having some independent analysis done on the offer to see what it might ultimately be worth to you. If you’re working the buy-side, prepare to spend lots of time fine-tuning the earn-out agreement—you won’t get credit if things go well for the seller, but you will get blamed if it doesn’t.

Industry Trends

What’s Got Our Eye

Current RIA Trends

This week, we’re sharing some recent media on trends in the RIA space. We’ve blogged about asset flows, bank interest in the RIA space, the plight of active management, and the fiduciary rule, but these articles represent a deeper dive into each of these topics.

Call Reports

2Q17 Call Reports

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

As we do every quarter, we take a look at some of the earnings commentary on pacemakers in asset management to gain further insight into the challenges and opportunities developing in the industry.

Transactions

RIA Dealmaking

What’s the Hold-Up?

We’re always perplexed by the lack of transactions in the RIA industry. Sure, there are some out there, but a typical year reports less than a hundred deals in a space with almost 12,000 federally registered advisors. This means that less than 1% of industry participants transact in a given year. How could that be in an aging profession with a highly scalable business model? We offer a few explanations in this week’s post.

Industry Trends

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

All Classes of Asset Managers Up Over the Last Year

All classes of asset managers are off to a decent start in 2017 after a strong end to 2016 as the market weighs the impact of fee compression against rising equity prices.

Investment Management

Mercer Capital provides RIAs, trust companies, and investment consultants with corporate valuation, litigation support, transaction advisory, and related services