Supporting the Acquisition and Integration Strategy of a National Wealth Management Firm
With Riveron’s support of the acquisition activities and audit, the financial firm’s accounting and finance teams were able to focus on the standard operations of the business and prepare for the aggressive acquisition timeline.
Challenge
A wealth management firm was acquired by a private equity fund. After the acquisition, the parent fund gave the company a target of completing eight to ten acquisitions per year. With limited resources and in-house M&A experience, the financial firm was unprepared for the significant amount of acquisition activity to come and needed help with the technical accounting resulting from its recent acquisition.
How we helped
Riveron was engaged to help with the purchase accounting and opening balance sheets for the acquired financial firm and our scope subsequently expanded to include audit assistance, vendor transitions, key-person compensation agreement reviews, and revenue data tracing. In support of the audit, we prepared technical accounting memos related to share-based compensation, purchase accounting, revenue recognition, and asset impairment. We then worked directly with the external auditor on the conclusions and any follow-up needed, which allowed the company’s accounting and finance team to focus on year-end and month-end close and regulatory filings.
In addition to the accounting and audit support, we developed a vendor transition integration plan and trained client personnel to manage and execute the plan to ensure timely termination of legacy company vendor contracts and transition to client contracts. We also helped compare pre-acquisition and post-acquisition revenues to ensure firm’s client contracts had been repapered and the firm’s advisors are realizing compensation targets based on expected post-acquisition revenue.
Results
With Riveron’s support of the acquisition activities and audit, the financial firm’s accounting and finance teams were able to focus on the standard operations of the business and prepare for the aggressive acquisition timeline. Additionally, with a detailed integration playbook, the firm’s inexperienced resources were able to assume responsibility for vendor transitions thereby reducing unexpected costs associated with untimely legacy-company vendor terminations.