FOR RIA PRINCIPALS AND PARTNERS
Selling an RIA is not the same as selling a book of business
A book of business changes hands through client relationships. A registered investment adviser changes hands through an entity, a regulator, and a set of consents that have to be obtained in a particular way. Most transition content ignores the difference — and the difference is where deals slip, get repriced, or quietly fail in diligence.
Three things that make an entity sale different
Consent is a legal requirement
Under the Investment Advisers Act an advisory contract cannot be assigned without client consent. Whether that consent must be affirmative or can be negative depends on how your firm is structured and registered — and getting the mechanism wrong does not merely annoy clients, it can put the transferred contracts in question.
Your Form ADV is part of the deal
Ownership changes flow through Schedule A and Schedule B. Amendments filed too early disclose a deal that has not closed; filed too late, they are a compliance problem. Buyers read your ADV history before they read your pitch, and a decade of filings says things you may not have said aloud.
Multiple owners, multiple veto points
Solo owners decide. Partnerships negotiate. If your operating agreement carries a buy-sell clause, a right of first refusal, or a drag-along that nobody has read since it was drafted, that document governs your exit whether or not it reflects what the partners now want.
Where this fits
This site covers the regulatory and structural side of an RIA transition. For what your practice is worth, how a private sale is run, and what a discreet process looks like from the seller’s chair, our sister resource Sell My Advisory Practice covers that ground in depth — including a free confidential valuation.
Sell My RIA Practice is an authorized lead-generation partner of buyAUM. buyAUM compensates us only if a transition is completed. Sellers are never charged a fee at any stage. Nothing on this site is legal, tax, or compliance advice.