MEDIA REVIEWS - December 1-7, 2011

Angie Herbers is currently involved in two of the most important projects currently going on in the practice management space: 1) her ongoing efforts to identify the office environment that best promotes loyalty and efficiency and growth among the staff; and 2) her exploration of "owner's guilt," and its implications for advisor management practices, which continues in this issue. In the process, I think we're looking over her shoulder and learning a lot.

Meanwhile, Bob Clark points out what you probably already know: that independent advisors are taking over market share from brokerage firms, and that brokerage firms have a plan to stop that nonsense by regulating everybody under FINRA and crushing independent advisors under a lot of unnecessary regulation. Mark Tibergien suggests that sellers of advisory practices help the buyers ask important questions about the deal as a way of protecting their staff and clients, and we learn that the SEC is revamping how it inspects advisor offices, hopefully for the better.

We are a week away from hearing a major proposal on how RIAs should be regulated by the SEC, which might blunt some of the impact of the brokerage world's master plan to use FINRA as a blunt instrument. Stay tuned...