RIA Valuation Insights

A weekly update on issues important to the Investment Management industry

Category

Practice Management


Debt Financing for RIAs

How to Finance an Ownership Transition

As noted in a recent post, there are many viable options for RIA principals when it comes to succession planning.  One way to transition ownership while maintaining independence is to sell internally to key staff members.  The most obvious roadblock when planning for internal succession is pricing.  But once you establish a price, how does the next generation pay?  An internal transition of ownership typically requires debt and/or seller financing as it’s unlikely that the next generation is able or willing to purchase 100% ownership in a matter of months.  In this post, we consider the expanding options for RIAs seeking debt financing and the typical terms they can expect.

Call Reports

Q3 2019 Call Reports

Differentiated Strategies of Asset Managers, Wealth Managers, and RIA Consolidators

During Q3 2019, most classes of RIA stocks underperformed major equity markets, which are having their best year, so far at least, in more than two decades. In general, base fees for RIAs were up due to higher average AUM (driven by market growth), however, each sector experienced unique challenges. As we do every quarter, we take a look at some of the earnings commentary from investment management pacesetters to scope out the dominate trends.

Wealth Management

WeInvest?

The Best Business Model in the RIA Industry Depends Not on Who You Ask, but Who’s Asking

Earlier this month we had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion on the value of wealth management firms in a transaction setting for the CFA Society of New York.  In conversation after the event, one of the audience members asked me what I thought was the most successful business model to follow in the wealth management space.  It’s a question we hear fairly often, and I try to avoid punting on the answer and saying “it depends.”  In reality, though, it does depend.

Transitioning Your Business to the Next Generation of Leadership

Successful Succession for RIAs

Continuing with our succession series, this week’s focus is on internal transitions.  If you’ve ever wondered why there aren’t more transactions in the RIA space, it’s largely because most of these businesses ultimately transition their ownership internally to younger partners at the firm.  These deals typically don’t get reported, so you probably don’t hear about most of them.  Still, it’s the most common type of transaction for investment management firms and probably something that’s crossed your mind if you’re approaching retirement.

Planning to Succeed

Succession is as often discussed as it is misunderstood.  While many practice management issues revolve around industry expectations, regulations, client expectations, and basic economics, succession involves all of those things plus personality, culture, and skill sets.  And while much has been written about succession in the RIA industry, we’ve seen plenty of topics get little, if any attention.  This post is dedicated to some of the latter.

Selling Your RIA to a Consolidator  

Successful Succession for RIAs

As we explained in a recent post, there are many viable exit options for RIA principals when it comes to succession planning.  In this post, we will review some of the considerations when partnering with an RIA consolidator. 

Partnering with a Minority Financial Investor

Successful Succession for RIAs

As we explained in a recent post, there are many viable exit options for RIA principals when it comes to succession planning. In this post we will review some considerations of partnering with a minority financial investor to achieve a successful transition of ownership.

Posturing for a Successful Succession

A recent Schwab survey asked RIA principals to rank their firm’s top priorities in the coming year.  We were disappointed but not surprised to discover that developing a succession plan was dead last. If you’re a founding partner or selling principal, you have a lot of exit options, and it’s never too soon to start thinking about succession planning. We’ll outline these options in this post and expound upon them in more detail later in the series.

How Does Your RIA Measure Up?

Schwab’s 2019 Benchmarking Study Offers Insights Into the RIA Industry

Schwab recently released its 2019 RIA Benchmarking Study.  The survey contains responses from over 1,300 RIAs that custody their assets at Schwab to questions about firm operating performance, strategy, and practice management.  The survey is a great resource for RIA principals to see how their firm’s performance and direction measure up against the average firm.  We’ve highlighted some of the key results from the study in this week’s post.

Trust Companies

Are Trust Companies Changing for the Better?

Trust Company Sector Update

Trust law has evolved over time, most recently with modern trust laws in the 1980s and 90s established by certain states such as Delaware, Nevada, and South Dakota. Other states, such as Tennessee, have developed compelling trust statutes in more recent years. Just as trust law has changed with the regulatory environment, trust companies are changing to meet clients’ evolving needs.

Transactions

Unsolicited Offers for Your RIA

Is the First Bid the Best?

The primary danger of an unsolicited offer is that it lures potential sellers into thinking the deal is done and the process will be easy.  As with most things in life, if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

The Ultimate Investment Vehicle

Is the Value of your RIA More a Function of Risk or Growth?

On paper, the RIA model is a value generating machine: a reliable stream of distributable cash flow resulting from sticky, recurring revenues and growing effortlessly with the investment returns available in a diversifiable variety of financial markets. The reality, of course, is more nuanced.

Industry Trends Transactions

What We’re Reading on the RIA Industry

M&A and Practice Management

Much of the sector’s recent press has focused on the current M&A environment as well as practice management issues for RIA firms, so we’ve highlighted some of the more salient pieces on these topics and a few others that are making news in the investment management industry.  

Buy-Sell Agreements for Investment Management Firms

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

As difficult it is to imagine a valuable car such as the Ferrari 250GT SWB being forgotten, what we see more commonly are forgotten buy-sell agreements, collecting dust in desk drawers. Unfortunately, these contracts often turn into liabilities, instead of assets, once they are exhumed, as the words on the page frequently commit the signatories to obligations long forgotten. So we encourage our clients to review their buy-sell agreements regularly, and have compiled some of our observations about how to do so in the whitepaper. We hope this will be helpful to you.

Five Questions to Ask Your P&L

A Great Start to 2019 is a Thorough Lookback at 2018

Now that January is almost over, we know that many of you have wrapped up quarterly investor communications and can now take a moment to think about your firm’s operations, direction, and other practice management issues. A useful place to begin your plan for 2019 is doing some fundamental research on your own business, starting with the P&L.

What is Your Firm’s “Brand” Worth?

Building the Value of an RIA Involves Making it More Than a Group of Professionals

The announcement from Merrill Lynch last week that they were cutting advisor compensation stood in stark contrast to a lawsuit filed in October by former Wells Fargo brokers, alleging that their practices had been impaired by association with the bank. While Merrill feels comfortable flexing their brand muscles by redirecting advisor cash flow back to the firm, Wells Fargo is accused of actually having negative brand value. These two situations highlight the dynamic interaction between investment management professionals and the firms they work for while demonstrating the significance of branding to build professional careers and advisory firm value.

It’s Not Just Elon: Founder’s Syndrome Depresses the Value of RIAs as Well

Like all founder-led companies, RIAs can benefit from the entrepreneurial zeal of the men and women who started them.  Unfortunately, that same appetite for risk-taking can lead to reckless behavior, and the identification of a founder with a namesake enterprise can complicate succession planning.  In any event, the risk associated with a founder-led RIA can lead to extreme results: taking advantage of a moon-shot opportunity, or a business that’s lost in space.

Transactions

The Role of Earn-outs in Asset Management M&A

Despite the relatively high level of financial sophistication among RIA buyers and sellers, and broad knowledge that substantial portions of value transacted depends on rewarding post-closing performance, contingent consideration remains a mystery to many industry M&A participants. Yet understanding earn-outs and the role they play in RIA deals is fundamental to understanding the value of these businesses, as well as how to represent oneself as a buyer or seller in a transaction. We offer this whitepaper to explore the basic economics of contingent consideration and the role it plays in negotiating RIA transactions.

Margins and Compensation

Staffing for Value

With last week’s release of the 2018 InvestmentNews Compensation & Staffing Study, trends in pay and performance expectations are making the rounds in the RIA community.  Even though we are a valuation firm, we are often asked to weigh in on compensation matters, as officer pay and firm value are typically intertwined. 

Why Scale Doesn’t Always Resolve Succession Issues

Recent challenges at Och-Ziff and Hightower highlight the struggles RIAs face in transitioning the business to the next generation of management.  Size doesn’t alleviate this problem and may actually exacerbate it for some asset managers.  In this week’s post, we explore what went wrong in these instances and what you can do to avoid a similar fate.do to avoid a similar fate.

Thinking About Going Exclusive?

Five Considerations for RIA/BD Hybrids Looking to Drop Their BD Status

With the Advisor Rule looming and commissions dwindling, it may be time for some RIA/BD hybrids to take it to the next level: drop the broker-dealer license and register exclusively with the SEC as an investment advisor.  This week’s post focuses on what’s driving the downward trend in BD-only registrants and when it makes sense to abandon the hybrid model.

Five Things RIA Owners Can Do to Turn Success into Momentum

While the fundamentals of your firm may appear to deteriorate during bear markets, the fundamentals of the industry will continue to drive success for a long time. Today, the fundamentals of your firm are probably the best they’ve ever been. That’s why this is the perfect time to consider your formula for success, prepare for the next downturn, and build the competitive momentum you’ll need to ride the industry trends to greater success in the future.

Current Events

The Tax Bill Rendered Your Shareholder Agreement Obsolete

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has really shaken up the underlying economics of investment management firms and, with that, the value of those firms. As a consequence, many owners of RIAs have inaccurate ideas of what their firms are worth, and, worse than that, they have outmoded shareholder agreements suggesting the willingness to transact at inaccurate valuations.

Current Events

What RIA Owners Need to Know About the New Tax Law

For this week’s post, we’re offering the slides and recording from our recent webinar on the tax bill’s impact on the investment management community.  On balance, we believe most RIAs are better off as a consequence of the legislation, but there are nuances to the “win.”

Investment Management

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