Best Buy founder among outsiders betting on financial advice firms
The demand for advisory firms to grow larger and larger has some reaching out to strange bedfellows for financial support.
Best Buy founder Richard M. Schulze is among the investors who recently took a 25% stake in Meristem Family Wealth, a $2.35 billion family wealth management firm seeking to expand. Read More
Best new compensation plans for advisers
How should firms distribute, determine and design compensation packages for advisers and support staff?
Compensation makes up the single largest cost for RIAs, according Schwab’s most-recent RIA Benchmarking Study, yet many firms do not have a well-defined incentive package in place to reward and retain talent. Read More
Savant Capital Targets $1B Annual AUM Growth
The march towards heightened M&A activity might not be ready to fade anytime soon. But any such mergers and acquisitions frenzy by RIAs, say experts, is likely to be in large part driven by succession planning issues as much as competitive economic pressure.
A prime case in point is a recent move by Savant Capital in Rockford, Ill. The 30-year-old regional giant among wealth managers has used M&A as a growth strategy over the past four years to push assets under management past $5 billion.Read More
How Brent Brodeski 'cut the middleman out' to get a no-strings $50 million for succession nirvana
Brooke's Note: RIAs have proven to be mostly unbeatable because of their ability to evenhandedly quarterback financial challenges on behalf of clients. But when it comes to funding their own futures, RIAs have tended to seek off-the-rack solutions, which, by definition, do not fit all sizes. Keeping control is a big problem and can be a fatal flaw considering that control is at the heart of what makes RIAs not only great businesses but great places for self-actualization. Read More
Building a smooth succession plan
Handing over one’s life’s work is a process at once emotionally taxing and strategically complex.
For advisers running their own registered investment advisers, having a long-term succession plan in place is critical to safeguarding the continued success of both the firm and the clients that they serve.
To ensure a smooth transition, the focus must be on building a valuable business that is attractive for sale and keeping all options open, said three succession experts during a Financial Planning webinar covering best practices for succession planning. Read More
First Republic's $70B-plus RIA roll-up loses four top executives as its contract with Luminous team ticks down
For the last eight years, James H. Herbert II has been quietly working to upend at least two bits of RIA conventional wisdom: that RIAs can't be rolled up and that banks can't buy RIAs without belching them back out a few years later.
The CEO and chairman of First Republic Bank has overseen growth of the bank's wealth manager mightily enough by focusing on high-net-worth and ultrahigh-net-worth investors. Read More