Page 6 - Devoe Co News Today

As private equity muscles into wealth management's fastest growing niche, it's injecting Wall Street business practices into financial planning.

The paper from University of Oregon researchers posits a tension between profit motives and ethical business practices.

Years of record-breaking M&A activity among RIAs are expected to be followed by more of the same this year, DeVoe & Co. research shows.

DeVoe’s lookback at 2021 reveals trends and surprises.

The prospect of higher taxes pushed M&A activity, while the pandemic created a focus on succession planning.

Private Ocean's sale to Wealthspire represents a broader industry trend of larger RIAs giving up ownership and control.

The U.S. economy is on pace for its best year of growth in GDP in decades, according to LPL Financial’s midyear outlook. The SEC hired a team of new policy officials, and barred a jailed Morgan Stanley advisor who pleaded guilty to defrauding clients out of $6 million. Wealth management mergers and acquisitions are at record levels in the first half of 2021, with RIA consolidators making 40% of the purchases, DeVoe & Co. found. And advisors moved to LPL, Commonwealth Financial Network, Summit...

14 Min Read John Eubanks, a director and CFP at Park Sutton Advisors, an investment bank in New York that specializes in financial services firms, says that private equity shops buying minority stakes in advisory firms “is a recurring theme right now.” The investments are attractive, he says, because of the growing profit margins at RIAs, an upswing that has led to “a premium in valuations being paid now.” Independent advisor practices have been in a flurry of mergers and acquisitions f...

Career path, standards less clear in financial advice than in other fields Professionals in any trade “have a sacred obligation to the client and society as a whole,” Blaine Aikin, founder of Fiduciary Insights, said in the keynote presentation at the InvestmentNews RIA Summit. May 18, 2021 3 MINS The path to becoming a financial adviser is not as clear as the paths to other professions, like doctors and lawyers, but that is changing, and more people should be prepared...

RIA consolidation returns to pre-Covid levels The surge in activity following the pandemic-induced lull is winding down as M&A returns to normal, according to DeVoe & Co. April 20, 2021 Despite another record quarter for RIA consolidation, M&A tracker DeVoe & Co. claims the pace of deal activity is in the final stage of the post-Covid surge. The record-setting 58 deals announced in the first three months of 2021 followed a record 159 transactions in 2020, including 48 in the fourth quarter, but...