Perspectives on RIA M&A

How buyers price the wealth management spectrum — fee-only, hybrid, broker-affiliated, practice or firm — and why the model frames the number.

The written plan as a corporate document — governance, buy-sell pricing, financing, client consent — and the regulatory layer that makes an RIA’s different.

An interactive tool that estimates a defensible value range for your firm from a few inputs — and shows which characteristics are pushing it up and which are pulling it down.

What’s driving the record deal activity, who’s buying, how a transaction gets done, and what separates a good outcome from a big one.

What aggregators are, how the PE-backed model works, how they differ from other buyers, and what to weigh before selling to one.

What actually sets the price when a book of business changes hands — retention, transferability, and how the deal is structured.

Private equity backs most of the buyers now — the three ways owners meet it, what sponsors want, and why timing turns on control.

What a sell-side process is, how each stage works, and what separates one that protects the seller from one that doesn’t.

A six-step method, with a worked example, for producing a defensible value range for your own firm.

What a minority deal entails, how it differs from a sale, and why the terms matter more than the headline valuation.

A primer on the private market for advisory firms — who the buyers are, what they want, and what a good outcome looks like.

What happens when you sell, in what order, and which decisions land on your desk along the way.

What the market pays today, how adjusted EBITDA is calculated, and why identical-AUM firms sell for very different numbers.

Continuity vs. succession planning, the internal and external paths, and the timing math that keeps your options open.