OctoBlast: Martyn Laverick on great regional IFA businesses and extracting the most value when selling

Octo Members
26 June 2019
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A 16-minute watch.  

Martyn Laverick is the MD of Soprano Consulting, a boutique M&A firm guiding corporate action with both buy-side and sell-side clients. In our latest OctoBlast series, Laverick chats to Lee Robertson about his work with advisers to enable them to extract the most value when selling-up. 

Although there’s plenty of activity in small scale IFA acquisitions, Laverick makes the point that consolidators won’t buy just anything for any price: “Is it a buyer’s market or a seller’s? I don’t it’s either” – “Consolidators are buying, but they’re not buying over the top”.

Laverick sees plenty of profitable, well-run adviser businesses up and down the country, but says that if due diligence reports were run on them, most would find small issues in certain areas that are likely only neglected through a lack of time, such as board minuting, HR processes, or shareholdings.

Sorting these issues “aides in price negotiations”, and is “good for any business”.

Ultimately, Laverick explains, “succession needs careful planning”, regardless of whether it’s employees considering an MBO or a consolidator a takeover, and goes on to outline common pitfalls and how these can be avoided.

Earlier this week we had Annabel Brodie-Smith in from the AIC to talk about their new adviser research initiative, and Ryan Hughes from AJ Bell on illiquidity in open-ended funds

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