By Michael D. Bilotta, President, Gladstone Group – Follow Michael on LinkedIn
RIA M&A broke records again in 2025. Depending on whose numbers you follow, the industry saw between 322 and 466 announced transactions (up as much as 27% year over year, the fastest acceleration since 2021). Q1 2026 kept the same pace, and the buyer universe is only getting larger and more sophisticated. Sellers are competing for attention in ways they were not five years ago, and those showing up unprepared are noticing.
I moderated both the buyers panel and the sellers panel at our 5th annual M&A conference in Philadelphia in April. The gap between what principals assume buyers care about and what buyers are actually focused on is getting more nuanced, and for RIA owners considering a sale in the next few years, this is important to know.
Here are a few notes that I hope will be “mythbusters” to help practice owners who are thinking about a move or sale in the next few years.
The Multiple Is Not Where Buyers Start
My first conversation with a potential seller almost always includes the question, “So what do you think my multiple is?” Sellers walk into a first conversation thinking about their multiple. Buyers walk in thinking about the durability of cash flow and profit. Before they get to a number, they are trying to answer one question: how valuable is this business, potentially without the owner, over the next 5-20 years?
There is terminology for this (Quality of Earnings, or QOE), but the underlying logic is not new. It is just being applied more rigorously and earlier than most sellers expect. Client concentration matters, revenue mix matters, client demographics matter, and so does whether your growth over the last five years was driven by net new assets or by a market that cooperated. The average transaction in 2025 included 29% equity in a full change-of-control deal, which reflects how seriously buyers take the question of whether sellers believe in what comes next.
Derek Bruton of Modern Wealth Management put it plainly on our Meet the Buyers Panel: “When the numbers do not fit the story the principal is telling, it is a concern.” He described a founder who claims to be growing like crazy, but when pressed on what net new assets actually mean, the answer gets soft. That disconnect does not get better as the process goes on.
A Real Brand Matters More Than Ever
This one surprises sellers. Jim King, who sold his RIA, Lindenwold Advisors, to Dakota Wealth Management and sat on our sellers panel, had a telling moment when he reflected on what he had feared most about the transaction. He thought losing his personal brand would be the hardest part. His words: “I thought I was going to go kicking and screaming, losing my recognition in the marketplace.” He did not. What he found was that a firm with a clear identity and strong client values made the transition almost seamless.
Buyers know this from the other side. A firm with a recognizable, differentiated identity carries lower risk through a transition. Clients stay because they know what they are in. Staff stay because there is something to stay for. Buyers today are deliberately building differentiated platforms, and sellers are prioritizing alignment, long-term growth, and outcomes for clients and employees.
That said, most principals I talk to believe their firm is at least decently well-known and well-regarded. Some of them are right. The ones who are not? They typically find out during diligence, which is the wrong time to find out anything that drives your number down.
The Team Matters As Much As The AUM
PE-backed buyers accounted for the majority of last year’s deals over $1 billion. Those buyers are not writing checks for spreadsheets. They are betting on teams, systems, and leadership structures that can survive a transition and keep growing on the other side.
Sarah Baker from Allworth Financial was direct about this on the Meet the Buyers panel. One of her biggest red flags was finding no second-generation leadership, no team around the founder, and no mention of staff in the initial conversation. In her words: “If it’s all about me in the initial conversation, then it’s like, okay, have you really built a team around you?” She also noted that Allworth has consistently heard from sellers, after the fact, that their biggest fear going in (client attrition) never materialized as their relationships largely stayed in place. Scott Dell’Orfano of CW Advisors confirmed it plainly: 99 to100% of clients come through every transaction.
The client relationships tend to hold. What buyers are actually underwriting is whether the rest of the business holds, too. Thin means revenue is concentrated in the founder, there’s no documented succession, and compensation does not create retention incentives post-close. Strong enterprise value follows a team that could describe what they do and why, without the founder standing over them. That is a high bar, and the firms that clear it move through a process differently.
Don’t Miss the Decision Window
Firms in the $500M to $5B range face increasing pressure, and the challenge of thriving as a boutique in the middle of the market is more acute than ever. That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to think carefully about timing.
Tony DuBose, who had closed his South Florida RIA, Legacy Wealth Management with Modern Wealth just 32 days before sitting on our sellers panel, said he had been a hard no on selling three years earlier. Fast forward, and his kids were not going to join the business. His net worth was 70-75% tied up in the firm. He started entertaining options, closed a deal, and within a month had already let go of things he thought he never could. He said he would get to be an advisor again, and he said it like someone who had set something down after carrying it too long.
The sellers who move through a process cleanly spent time before the call building something that did not require explanation: clean books, a real brand, and a team that stands on its own. They were not necessarily planning to sell. They just ran the business that way.
If you are curious where your firm stands relative to what buyers are actually looking for today, we are glad to have that conversation before anyone is ready to act on it.
Michael D. Bilotta is the President of Gladstone’s M&A advisory practice. He has advised on RIA and wealth management transactions for nearly 20 years.