Ralph Mitchell

In 2013, against the backdrop of the increasing burden of regulation in the industry, which coincided with one of the shareholder/directors wanting to retire, we made the decision to join a large national IFA firm that had the resources and compliance support that we needed in order to continue to flourish and grow as a firm.

We spoke to several businesses and expressed that our chief concern was to ensure that our clients and staff would be looked after post acquisition – we had looked after most of our clients for many years and they were (and still are) good friends.

Clients

We met several prospective purchasers, but most wanted us to move our clients and their money onto a different platform and charge our clients a fee to do that, which ultimately paid for our buy-out.

We were not comfortable with that; we wanted to “sell” not “sell-out”, so we put the whole issue of a sale on the back burner.

I then received a phone call from an agent who said they had the ideal fit for us, and they were right; Fairstone put clients at the centre of their planning, which married perfectly with our ethos – we didn’t have to move clients onto a different platform, or increase client fees, we could remain independent, and we could all continue to work from the same office.

Didn’t look back

We joined Fairstone’s Downstream Buy Out (DBO) programme in late 2017 before integrating with the firm and being fully acquired within 15 months rather than the normal two years – both parties were comfortable that the match was perfect.

From that call from the agent (I remember being at The Shard) we didn’t look back; we had a great meeting with Dennis Reed and within months we had shaken hands and started our integration journey.

Trust

The DBO process gave us the opportunity to really get to know Fairstone and in turn for them to get to know us, which helped to build up trust between us before we
made the final leap.

I can honestly say that things couldn’t have gone better and in February 2019 we were fully acquired. We were also awarded “partner firm of the year” in 2019, and “office of the year” in 2020.

We couldn’t be happier about going down the Fairstone route and we pat ourselves on the back (virtually for a while) at what a good move it was for clients, staff and ourselves – as we keep saying, we ‘sold up, not sold out’.

Further Role

Since then, as I have more time not running the business, I have been able to focus on spending more time advising my clients, which has been great.

I have also taken on a more senior role at Fairstone, helping to drive M&A activity across the business through utilising my knowledge within the local market, to find like-minded local firms to bolt on to the business and build our East Midlands hub.

I have been a financial adviser for 30 years now and this new role means that I can share my first-hand experience on how we “sold our baby” (the old company) into the safe hands of Fairstone.

I am genuinely very happy with the decision that we made, as are all of my colleagues who joined Fairstone with me.