FILINGS AND DISCLOSURE
Form ADV and the sale of your firm
Your Form ADV is a decade-long public record of how your firm has been owned, run and disclosed. In a transition it stops being a compliance chore and becomes a diligence document.
Where ownership lives in the ADV
Schedule A covers direct owners and executive officers; Schedule B covers indirect owners. A change in control flows through both. Buyers reconstruct your ownership history from these schedules before they ask you about it.
Timing an amendment
Amendments have deadlines, and a pending transaction creates a judgment call: disclose too early and you have signalled a deal that may not close; too late and you have a filing problem. This is a question to work through with counsel and your buyer jointly rather than unilaterally.
What your filing history says about you
Consistent AUM growth reads one way; three years of flat or declining assets reads another. Item 11 disclosures get read closely. Frequent changes in custodian, auditor or CCO invite questions. None of these are disqualifying — but they are all visible, and it is better to have your explanation ready than to be asked cold.
Cleaning up before you go to market
Reconcile your reported AUM basis with how you actually calculate it. Confirm your listed disciplinary and legal disclosures are current. Make sure who appears on Schedule A matches who actually owns the firm. These are unglamorous and they materially reduce diligence friction.
Not legal advice. Filing obligations and amendment timing depend on your registration and facts. Confirm with securities counsel.
Thinking about timing?
How a discreet private process is sequenced — and what happens before anything is filed — is covered on our sister resource.
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.