A weekly update on issues important to the Investment Management industry
The asset management industry fared well in 2021 against a backdrop of rising markets and improved net inflows. Strong performance in equity markets was a major contributor to this performance. In addition, 2021 saw modest organic growth, although there were significant variances by asset class. In this week’s post, we discuss these issues and present our outlook for the industry.
Deal count is projected to reach new highs in the fourth quarter of 2021 as market activity continues to gain momentum, likely rounding out another record-breaking year for the RIA industry. In keeping with the rest of 2021, deal volume was driven by secular trends and supportive capital markets. As market activity remains robust, competition for deals continues to favor RIA aggregators such as Mercer Advisors, Mariner Wealth Advisors, Wealth Enhancement Group, and Focus Financial Partners (FOCS), to name a few. In this week’s post, we provide more information about the aggregators and offer our thoughts for the future.
As year-end approaches, we hope to spread some cheer with our annual RIA Holiday Quiz. There is a chance to win a prize with a perfect score! Don’t forget to supply your contact information so we know who to send the prize to. Merry Christmas!
An RIA’s margin is a simple, easily observable figure that encompasses a range of underlying considerations about a firm that is more difficult to measure, resulting in a convenient shorthand for how well the firm is doing. Does a firm have the right people in the right roles? Is the firm charging enough for the services it is providing? Does the firm have enough–but not too much—overhead for its size? The answers to all these questions (and more) are condensed into the firm’s margin.
Knowing why you’re successful is a key to sustaining success. This week we offer five thoughts on turning your RIA’s success into momentum.
It is never too soon to start thinking about succession planning. There are many viable exit options for RIA principals when it comes to succession planning. This week we discuss six exit options to consider while planning your eventual business transition.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The rise of “permanent capital” providers is both in response to and appropriate for the current environment of premium entrance multiples in the RIA space. While making a permanent capital investment doesn’t eliminate the depressive effects of current valuations on returns, it does help to mitigate them.
Absent self-imposed pressure to generate an exit within the foreseeable future, RIA investors can focus on opportunities for sustainable and growing distributions – the real value of investing in investment management.
After a year off, ATO held its annual meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida to discuss industry trends, practice management, transaction activity, and the current competitive landscape.
In this week’s post, we discuss our main takeaways from the meeting.
Selling the business you built from the ground up is a bittersweet experience. Many business owners focus their efforts on growing their business and push planning for their eventual exit aside until it can’t be ignored any longer. While this delay may only prove mildly detrimental to deal proceeds in other industries, in the investment management space, there are very few buyers who will be interested in YOUR business without YOU (at least for a little while).
Long before your eventual exit, you should begin planning for the day you will leave the business you built. There are many considerations for investment managers contemplating a sale, in this post we suggest four ways that you should start.
Valuation gaps are frequently encountered in RIA transactions. Buyers and sellers naturally have different perspectives that lead to different opinions on value. These different perspectives, unsurprisingly, lead to different opinions on value, and the gap can be substantial. Bridging that gap is key to getting a deal done. In this week’s post, we address four ways that buyers and sellers can bridge a valuation gap.
The pricing of minority transactions in the RIA space leaves some people scratching their head. Traditional valuation theory holds that investors pay less for minority interests than controlling interests. Reality suggests otherwise.
While the wealth management industry is not new, the amount of change, churn, and growth that has occurred in the industry over the past ten years make it easy to forget how far the RIA industry has come since the heyday of broker-dealers. Contextualizing the challenges facing the wealth management industry leaves one to wonder if many of these trends are no more than growing pains in the sector’s life cycle. And if so, what might such analysis suggest about the prospects for the fiduciary model?
Did you know 67% of RIA principals plan to sell, merge, or conduct a transaction through which they will leave the business in the next 5 years? Yet, only 36% have either a signed ownership agreement or strategy in place? There are some explanations to this disconnect that we discuss in this post. Because succession planning is so important, we conclude by discussing how to ensure a successful succession.
Independent trust companies are frequently named in wills to serve as the trustee of an estate or living trust. These appointments may create a revenue opportunity for an independent trust company next year or fifty years from now. A trust company is sometimes notified of their assignment but isn’t always. Future fiduciary appointments certainly have some value; but how much and how do you measure it?
Consolidation is a theme that has a lot of traction in the RIA industry: that a growing multitude of buyers are scrambling to outbid each other for a limited and shrinking number of firms. With the rapid pace of deal activity in the RIA industry, you might expect to see the number of firms decline, as that is typically the norm for consolidating industries. But that’s not been the case in the RIA industry, at least yet. Despite consolidation pressures and record levels of acquisition activity, the reality is that the number of RIAs continues to increase, with formations outpacing consolidation.
Another way to track consolidation is to look at how assets under management are distributed across firms of different sizes, rather than at the number of firms. The industry hasn’t seen significant consolidation by this metric either. So what does all this mean for the industry? This post tackles that question.
Are RIA transaction multiples getting out of hand? Contrary to the usual laws of supply and demand, each week it seems like we hear about another blockbuster deal rumored to have happened at an astronomical price, and correspondingly, we meet a new capital source we hadn’t known previously who is looking for way to implement an acquisition strategy in the RIA space. Is this FOMO on a grand scale, or just part of a grander moment in market dynamics?
The second quarter was especially kind to the alt manager sector, which benefited from favorable market conditions and growing interest from institutional investors. These trends initially took root last Fall before gaining considerable momentum in the second quarter.
RIA MIA activity slowed somewhat in the second quarter of Q2, but RIA markets are still on track to record the highest annual deal volume on record. As we discussed last quarter, fee pressure in the asset management space and a lack of succession planning by many wealth managers are still driving consolidation. But the increased availability of funding in the space, in tandem with more lenient financing terms, has also caused some of this uptick. But could some of this activity be attributable to the RIA rumor mill and the hype of double-digit multiples in the space?
