Dan Moisand

Advisories run a risk of losing clients and talent if their culture changes after a sale .

HEN YOU RUN AN ADVISORY FIRM , SOMETIMES people show up who want to work for you . Sometimes these are people fresh out of college who want to learn planning a certain way . Sometimes they are career-changers who caught the planning bug late in life .

But lately , I ’ ve seen another trend : people who ’ ve fled other advisory firms that have been bought out and who don ’ t like their jobs anymore . I call them “ M & A refugees ” and from what I can see , their numbers are growing .

Our firm , Moisand Fitzgerald Tamayo , has been blessed — discovering that we too have become attractive to potential buyers , and we ’ re regularly asked to explore transactions . We ’ ve gone pretty far down the exploratory road a couple times , looking at possible deals , but we ’ ve turned down all the proposals . We didn ’ t pass on these deals because the offers were bad or because we didn ’ t respect the people making them ( in fact , in some cases we went as far as we did sheerly out of respect for them ). But we declined because we value our independence too much to fold into another firm and experience the cultural change that happens after a merger . We worry about possibly creating more M & A refugees ourselves .

Deals Are Tricky

The deals put in front of us were sometimes reasonable , but they were also tricky to assess , even if we assumed the suitors were acting in good faith and without nefarious intent . Everybody who stands on the opposite sides of a transaction wants to manage their risks , and sometimes the headlines about today ’ s RIA acquisitions don ’ t capture everything that ’ s really going on .

MARCH 2025 | FINANCIAL ADVISOR MAGAZINE | 17