The 1970s weren’t too kind to the auto industry. Between the OPEC oil embargo, new environmental regulations and disco, automotive design mostly devolved into underpowered, uninspired boxes. One noteworthy exception to all this was the Pontiac Trans Am. Neither boxy nor underpowered, the Trans Am was a hot mess with a huge motor that overpowered the car’’s weak brakes and lousy handling. All in all, though, it worked. From the driver’s seat, you could forget all about the “malaise” while you stared up at the sky through the T-tops or across the giant decal of a flaming bird on the hood. As GTs go, it was no Aston Martin, but it was good enough to help Burt Reynolds smuggle a semi full of Coors across the southeast in Smokey and the Bandit.

What was a perfect statement about America in 1977 is not so applicable today. Almost 40 years later, Burt Reynolds is still around, but Pontiac isn’t, and people are more likely to cross state lines to buy craft beer than Coors. It’s a point worth remembering when thinking about how to value your RIA for purposes of a shareholder agreement: times change.

A recurring problem we see with buy-sell agreements are pricing mechanisms that are out of date. Usually, this shows up in the form of some kind of rule of thumb valuation metric that is no longer market relevant. We’ve also seen buy-sell agreements that cite standards of value that don’t exist in the modern valuation lexicon, and even some that specify appraisers from firms that no longer exist.

Keeping the language in your agreement up to date is important, but the most reliable way to avoid some unintended consequence of your buy-sell agreement is to have a pricing mechanism that specifies a regular valuation of your RIA’s stock. An annual valuation accomplishes a number of good things for an investment management firm, but the main one is managing expectations.

If your ownership sees a set of consistently prepared appraisals over the course of several years, they know what to expect. By this I mean there is some level of agreement over who is to provide the valuation, what information will provide the basis of valuation, and how the valuation itself will be constructed. This doesn’t guarantee that everyone will be satisfied with the conclusion of value, and our experience is that partners in investment management firms often have differing opinions of the value of an RIA. Some difference of opinion is to be expected, but the process of having a regular valuation prepared by an independent party can go a long way toward narrowing that difference of opinion. If there is little difference of opinion over the values at which ownership in a firm transacts, there will be little incentive to litigate when a sizable transaction comes along.

Recommending an annual valuation may sound a little self-serving and, indeed, doing that sort of work is good business for us. We also handle dispute resolutions for shareholder disagreements, however, and the cost of that work is never less than several times the cost of an annual appraisal – not to mention substantial legal fees and the immeasurable cost of management distractions. All in all, we would rather dispense the ounce of prevention than the pound of cure.

P.S.: There is an updated edition of the Trans Am available.