At Financial Eye we meet so many management teams and partners who have never discussed what their personal ambitions are, let alone what they want to achieve as a business. We help firms to formulate their plans and align their goals into a coherent strategy. It becomes quite enlightening when a firm knows that the Managing Partner wants to retire in 18 months.
Key areas to think about are:
- What is the current ownership structure
- Is the business vehicle right for what you want to achieve
- Who do you want to hand-over to
- Do you have people in your business to hand-over to
- How do you achieve your goals using the optimum allowable tax regime
We work with a number of specialists when it comes to achieving these goals. One such specialist is Colin White at Ortus Group.
Ortus Group
Colin White founded Ortus in 2004 with the central aim of creating a professional organisation that would apply a commercial understanding of law practices in order to deliver market leading executive search and merger brokering services. Simply put, they find fee-earners, entire departments or entire firms and find homes for them
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n 2009, Ortus merged with Boston Bailey Group, who were delivering almost identical services to the accountancy market. Shortly after Ortus extended the offering to include Independent Financial Advisors following client demand. Today, Ortus have a track record of delivering significant sales, acquisitions and many lateral partner hires across the UK.
The principle service is the identification, origination and brokering of deals for professional practices and individual partners in the professional services sector.
Essentially, they offer two services in two different scenarios:
- Represent businesses seeking growth by acquisition
- Represent businesses seeking growth by lateral recruitment
- Represent owners either as a group or as individuals seeking to pass on liabilities and succession of the firm
- Represent senior individuals seeking to leave their firm to secure a better business opportunity elsewhere
Completed projects in the legal sector include:
- For one client, OG researched, sourced and facilitated three acquisitions in London, including their first office in the city. These three firms included one full service West-End firm and two niche practices, one in Private Wealth and the other in Corporate Law. This, combined with a number of senior executive search projects to complement the acquisitions has resulted in adding more than £7m turnover to this firm alone.
- For another client, OG has, to date, recruited twelve partners over nine years, including facilitating the opening of a new office in London and acquiring a high net worth property practice in Greater London.
- Team and partner level executive search projects completed for law firms in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Bristol have delivered client bases and expertise in disciplines as broad as Private Client, Corporate Finance, Catastrophic Injury, Property Litigation and Regulatory. Most projects have delivered fees in excess of the first-year costs for the teams, including OG’s professional fees.
- OG has completed numerous projects that have been exit planning for independent partnerships where we have analysed the business, advised on changes before taking it to market and then originating buyers for these firms before facilitating the process to completion. This has ensured peace of mind for many owners who have handed over all liabilities and retired
Financial Eye also work with specialists in the field of Tax and structure planning, Insurance advisory and of course we have our own risk management expertise which we apply in these scenarios. Please get in touch with us if you would like to discuss how we and our team can help you.