This session explores the changing UK top 100 landscape, with experts discussing trends, M&A, and technology investments. A poll showed strong support for the top 100’s relevance. Key points included growth in firms sized 20-40, consolidation via private equity, and the importance of preserving company culture and communication during acquisitions. The session highlights the dynamic accounting industry and M&A’s strategic role in growth.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us on, Thursday, the fifth of December. For this webinar, looking at the UK top one hundred, the changing landscape and what it means, I will start in a second, and and kinda get going, but I’ll give everyone a few minutes to to dial in. I know that starting anything directly on the hour is always difficult because if you’re gonna get coffee and croissants and all those lovely things that we do first thing in the morning. So we’ll we’ll we’ll get going in a minute. Hopefully, if you travel into work today, you have a more, a more fun journey than I did. Northern line was very busy this morning for some unknown reason, which was always fun coming into London. Normally, I would, suggest that you pop something in the chat, but I don’t think we’ve got the chat open today. We do have the q and a open. So for any point during this webinar that you want to ask us a question, you can pop something into the q and a, and I or or one of my guests will will answer that during the webinar. But but for sure, the q and a will be open throughout this webinar. So, a hundred percent, you can feel free to ask myself or my guests any questions. So we’ll give it a give it another minute just to allow people to drop, to drop in, and then we will get going. Russell, you’re on my screen at the moment. Did you travel, traveling to work today, or you, did you, are you working locally today? No. I’m in in London today. So, yeah, I got caught across the central line. So there’s just a few minor delays coming across, but, yeah, it wasn’t as bad as the first thought when I woke up this morning. Because I heard, severe delays and all of that banded around, and you think the worst. You always do. Paul, you look like you’re working from home. So I I I’m assuming your commute was quite easy this morning. I just walked up the stairs. The the biggest danger you have walking up the stairs is spilling the coffee, I find, in the mornings. And Sarah seems to have dropped off for a second. I’m sure she’ll be back in a sec. Right. Well, let’s, let’s get going. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this webinar. Looking at the UK top one hundred, the changing landscape and what it means. So, we’ll be going, well, I’ll talk to you a little bit in a second. Let me introduce my, panel and my guests for today. In fact, let me let I’ll get them to introduce themselves because I think, like, rather than listening to me talk about it. So let’s go first to, Sarah. If you’d like to just say hello and do a quick introduction, that’d be fantastic. Absolutely. Good morning, everyone. I’m Sarah Gardner, and I’m a partner at Shaw Gibbs. I also day to day head up our outsourcing division, alongside the board with our private equity partner, April Capital. Fantastic. And, Russell, over to you. We’ll do it in the order of the slides because it it makes sense that way. Totally makes sense. Hi, everyone. So, yeah, Russell Frame, director of transformation here at Gravita. We are so we’ve got private equity backers, Tenzing. Fantastic. And last, but certainly not least, Paul, over to you. Hi. Good morning, everybody. My name is Paul Finegan. I’m now a consultant, but was, for thirteen years, chief operating officer at Blitt Rothenberg, who were one of the first firms to take PE investments. And for the last six years, I’ve been consulting to a mixture of directly to fast growing accountancy firms, but also to PE firms looking to invest in the sector. Fantastic. So, Paul, you’re you’re probably part of the reason why we’re sat here today having this conversation. So that’s an interesting one to dig into. And for those of you that don’t know me, my name is Phil Hobden. I’m the UK sales lead for Silverfin. For those of you that don’t know Silverfin, we are a compliance software in the cloud, focusing on working papers, accounts production, and corporation tax, and that’s, all you’ll hear from me about Silverfin at this point because we wanna talk about this, this this topic. Right? Good. Well, look. Welcome, Sarah, Russell, and Paul. Thank you for joining us today. So when we get going, I wanna run a small poll. So I’m gonna put this up on the screen. So just give me two seconds just to launch this. So, I’d like you to answer. Is the top is the concept of a top one hundred relevant anymore? Three answers. Yes. Yes, but only if you’re in it, and no. So if you could, give the different votes on this on the, in the poll, and we can kinda have a look at kind of the the the flavor of the room and and what people think. Clearly, what we do is I normally wait till we get to about seventy five percent on the on the polls, and we’ll kinda talk a little bit into that as we go through the webinar today. So So we’re about sixty three percent. So anyone else want to pop in? I’ll give you another couple of seconds. Fantastic. So I will end the poll, and I will share the results. So, hopefully, you can see these results on your screen right now. And overwhelmingly, yes. But overwhelmingly, also yes, only if you’re in it. Right? So and I’m sure this is a concept that we’ll we’ll talk about. Just just one person saying no, which is good. Excellent. So let’s kinda set a little bit of a, flavor for today. So we’re gonna cover over the next fifty minutes. The call will be recorded. And, of course, like I said, you’re you’re welcome to pop questions in the q and a at any point throughout this webinar, and we will try and get to them as we work our way through. So, firstly, we’re gonna start off with, a topic around what trends are we seeing in this year’s top one hundred. We’re gonna then dive a little bit more into what’s driving the surge in m and a activity within the accounting space. Now, obviously, and very clearly, this has been a, you know, a topic that’s been very prevalent over the past probably three or four years going back further, but certainly the last couple of years, we’ve seen a massive escalation of that. And, Sarah, Shaw Gibbs is is a perfect example of a firm that has acquired a huge amount of of businesses during that time. We’ll then look at why are PE organizations investing and what challenges or opportunities do this bring to firms. And then finally, we’ll kinda look at how important is size in the the grand scheme of accountancy and and accountancy firms. So those are our four topics that we’re gonna be looking at today. So let’s get started with what trends have we seen in this year’s top one hundred. So, by the way, this is not gonna be a slide heavy presentation. This is pretty much it for the slides. Russell, Sarah, you’ve done webinars with me before. You know that I’m not a great fan of slides. I prefer the the the conversation part. But these are some trends that we’ve pulled out. And, Paul, I mean, I know this is kind of your your area of of expertise, especially, but, anything that you’ve seen from the top one hundred while I leave this on the screen and and kind of that and the changes over the past year that you think might be relevant? So I think, I mean, it’s it’s it’s not a surprise given the level of PE investments and consolidation that the the size of the firms, particularly in the sort of the twenty to forty bracket, has gone up significantly. And there’s lots of reasons for, the desire to invest and to, I guess, achieve economies of scale, which perhaps we’ll we’ll come on to a little bit later. Yeah. Excellent. And I think look. We’ve identified kind of eight key trends. So m and a driving growth, well, that’s, certainly not a surprise for anyone on this call. Technology investments, so significant tech spending, especially by Deloitte, but other firms as well. And, again, like, you know, Gravita, sure gives are two great examples of firms that have acquired, that are growing, but also are really investing in that techy infrastructure. I get my words out this morning. Innovation impact. So, you know, firms are embracing AI and automation and are seeing notable growth and improved services. Ongoing consolidation with more than thirty five percent of the top one hundred firms in the UK currently involved in m and a and clearly, you know, probably a load more that we don’t even know about yet, and I’m sure that will that will come out because clearly, as a as a layperson, we only tend to find out about this stuff, after it happens when it hits the the trade papers. Record fee income, PwC broke the six million pound barrier of a strong performance across all the top firms. It’s fair to say that talent challenges remain. So a lot of the top one hundred firms in the UK and beyond still report challenges around talent attracting talent and retaining talent. And I think, you know, there there’s a degree that we can talk about the, you know, technology and and the investment and how that actually plays to help talent. And variety shifts, well, guess what? Like, we’re always trying to add more services, more depth, and and more kind of strings to our bone to to try and kind of maximize our revenue. And then, you know, there are a load of new entrants in the top one hundred firms in the UK and and, you know, where private equity has has helped bring some some new businesses into what we look at as the the the largest firms within the UK. Those are some of the trends that that kind of we’ve identified here. Sarah, anything that you’ve, you’ve pulled out from from looking across the list and and what you’ve seen? Yeah. I think looking at that ongoing consolidation piece and perhaps it’s the the world I’m living in at the moment, that number actually felt quite low to me. I think it’ll be really interesting to look at that trend last year because, obviously, we are talking about the largest firms in the UK, and and some of those consolidation models have been built with slightly fuller firms. And you can see the transaction levels now increasing or the size of the transactions. So I think it’ll be interesting to see next year if if that number is higher again. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think I think you’re right. I think, yeah, that’s definitely a good marker for us to be watching. Russell, how about you? Is there anything that you’ve seen within, the kind of the newest of the top one hundred firms in the UK? So I think we we all expected there to be activity in the current year. Probably not as much as I was initially anticipating in terms of, new investment, coming into that that sort of, top tier. But, for me, definitely, I think the the talent challenge, I think private equity is enabling firms to kind of go into a bigger network, a bigger pool of resource and people. And I think what I’ve noticed is that acquisitions now are going down more of a sector or niche focus. So they’re trying to expand going back to service offering and advisory and additional revenue lines and things like that. So I think that was a fairly obvious, trend that I kinda could could kinda see sort of playing out. The the one for me is that, obviously, we’ve got advisory shift, and we’ve got the way that revenue is being delivered. For me, the revenue per partner and, obviously, these are all subjective type metrics. But over the number of years that I’ve been looking at revenue per partner or revenue per head, I’ve not seen a dramatic change. And with all of the PE money coming into this space with investment in technology, ongoing consolidation, you know, bringing, better integration between these sort of fragmented firms they required, cynically, I was expected to see revenue per partner start to go up, especially, you know, take take the sort of, you know, top top three, top four where the revenue per partner is significantly weighted to much larger corporate jobs. I was expecting to see a shift in, that sort of revenue per head type number. Okay. Interesting. And I guess a question for all of you. Were you surprised in in general at the the gap in the revenue wasn’t quite as big as maybe I was expecting between some of the larger firms? So so, like, I I I predicted at some point there would be more of a gulf between not the haves and the have’s nots, right, but, like, the larger and the the the smaller of the larger firms. But that gulf’s not probably quite as big as as maybe we expected. And, again, you know, there’s probably reasons behind this. But but does that that kind of surprise anyone, or or or do you think that’s kind of expected? I think if I would very If I would comment on that, just jump in first. Because I was I was thinking about this, the the other day, Phil, after we chatted. And I think if you look at a private equity life cycle of being sort of that kind of four year window, say four to five, you’ll find, like, most of the early investment happens towards the beginning of the life cycle, and they’ll trade a lot towards the end. So I think as we’ve got these different actually houses in the market now with the different aggregator firms, they’re all at different stages of that life cycle. So I think what we kind of see is this sort of sort of jump approach up the table based on where they are and how aggressive they are in the market. And we noticed that with the likes of, summer coming into the market this year as a consolidator for the first time, as opposed to being, you know, independent. Yeah. That was that was an interesting one. Paul, in terms of of this area, anything that you’ve you’ve spotted or or or your thoughts on on these trends? I guess, coming from from Blick Rothenberg from when we sold in in in twenty sixteen, I I was interested to look at how the top hundred now compares to what it was eight years ago. And I think to pick up on on Russell’s point, the the level of investment has taken there’s way more firms in that sort of a hundred million turnover bracket now. So that previously, that would have got you into, you know, the top ten, top twelve in the UK. Now a hundred million only gets you into the top twenty five. So it’s a real real difference. And then but if you look down to the bottom of the table, at a hundred, in a hundredth place, that’s actually a smaller turnover company than was in the top one hundred last year. So the consolidation has increased the size of firms near the top, but at the bottom, it doesn’t seem to obviously, hasn’t made as much difference, and some of the smaller firms have been absorbed into the larger practices. And do you think Do you think that will be an ongoing trend of of of the larger as the larger firms get larger, the the entry point to to be considered within those top one hundred firms within the UK gets a little smaller. So do do you think that’ll be an ongoing trend, or do you think that’s just a blip for this year? I think it’s really interesting to there’s lots of firms who are strongly independent. And as long as they can continue to to compete comfortably, and can manage the investment to keep pace with the technology, then, they may not see the need to to to to merge or be acquired. But I think we’ve all seen firms who were staunchly independent, Blitt Crockenberg included, who had always said we, you know, we’re we’re in we’re a strong independent practice, but then change their mind or circumstances changed. So I’m I’d love to roll forward two two two, three years and and look at the what the top one hundred looks like then. Yeah. It it it will definitely be, it’ll definitely be an interesting marker, and I think, you know, the the trends that we’re seeing now will will definitely you know, I think a lot of them will continue in the future, but you’re right. That’s, that’s an interesting point. So we’ve kinda looked back at where we are this year. Let’s kinda look at our second topic then and and what’s driving this surge in m and a activity. Now for for some of you on the call that this might be a, you know, an in an an easy answer. Right? You go, of course. But, actually, it’s probably a lot of people looking in from the outside. And we’ve seen it not just in the the accountancy space, but in the accounting technology space. So this week, it was announced that, Dex had been acquired, by another HG company. And this is you know, we early on this year, we saw Xero being, purchasing Sift Analytics for, I think, it was seventy million Australian dollars. I don’t know what the the exact translation of that is, but it’s a lot of money. So, you know, there’s a there’s a lot of m and a activity both in the accounting space directly with practices and in the accounting technology space, and it seems to be going faster than ever. So, Sarah, maybe I’ll come to you first, as as someone that is doing a lot of this this movement within the market, for you, what is driving the surge in m and a activity, and why now? Yeah. I think perhaps if we explore first why people are selling as opposed to perhaps why people are, people are buying. You know, yes of course there are some people who are looking at their succession planning and and the sources of finance perhaps aren’t there to facilitate that but I do think that we need to dispel a little bit of that. There are some really entrepreneurial businesses and Paul will be able to talk about some of those businesses he’s speaking with, that are actively deciding to build something to sell, something that ticks all of those boxes that will attract private equity and attract the likes of ourselves and gravitate to work with them. You know, these are not traditional businesses who don’t have any other options. They are quite exciting businesses, and there are also I try not to talk about age too much, but there are some really young, entrepreneurial, ambitious partners who are backing these transactions. Yeah. That’s that’s an interesting point because I think, you know, maybe a lot of people assume that m and a activity comes from, older partners wanting to exit or or or businesses that have stagnated that that like, you know, how do we maximize the the return now? But, actually, what you’re saying is that’s not always the case. There are people that are actually building businesses specifically to sell. Russell, what’s what’s your take on that? Yeah. Without getting into the the boring intricacies of what equity houses are looking at in terms of boxes they’re looking to tick, I think, you know, Sarah’s right there. I’ve definitely seen businesses now coming into the market being a bit more boutique, a bit more niche, and some of that is born out of frustration. And I think a lot of these businesses and partners have looked at this m and a model. It’s been around for a number of years already. Right? And it’s a case of, show us what that looks like and how it evolves over time. I think at this point, we’ve got to, like, this this tipping point where the equity houses are kind of getting it, and they can still see that there’s there’s ripe for change in the industry. Accountants are accountants at the end of the day. The pace of change, the rate of change, the pace of technology is is probably, at its peak from where it has been, for a long, long time. So I think the the interest is definitely there. What was quite interesting with with what was released this year was the number of new actually houses joining the party. So there’s there’s definitely interest, and it all got slightly different strategies in terms of what they’re trying to to buy, and what what they’re sort of looking for. So it’s really interesting that there’s there’s no one hard and fast rule at the moment in this space, which is really refreshing. But but I have definitely seen these sort of new challenger practices popping up where they are very, very much focusing on all of these tick markers for potential future private equity acquisition. Yeah. Paul, anything that you want to to to add to that? You’re obviously seeing it from from you’ve seen it from both the inside and the outside. Yeah. So it’d be really interesting to get your tape as well. So I think I mean, to to come back to your question of, you know, why why are we seeing the surge in m and a activity? I think the starting point for me is look at what is it what is it that clients want, and what is it that they’re buying. So in very simplistic terms, they you’ve got compliance and more process orientated work, and then you’ve got advisory and more technical. And then what you’re seeing in the and Russell talked about in terms of the investment in technology, the ability to work more efficiently, deliver what the client wants, with less labor cost, timely use of technology, to invest in that, you probably need some economies of scale. So the the the desire to acquire firms, build scale, spread the cost of the investment in technology is there. On the advisory side, firms are acquiring perhaps not either boutique or or firms where they have a a complimentary skill set that allows them to provide a broader range of services to clients and at the same time then attract the best quality people. So I think there’s those kind of there’s two drivers around technology and scale. I’m not saying that, you know, size is necessarily best, but it is certainly one way to build a practice that is both efficient and has the quality the clients are looking for. I’m another I’m a buyer of accountancy services, and I want to know for my small business, I want to know that things are being done quickly, efficiently, and in the best way, and I want access to people when I need more complex advice. Yeah. And I wonder if, kind of this loops into our fourth topic and and kind of move it around a little bit, but does size matter? You know, how important is size? And I wonder, going back to the poll at the beginning, you know, does the top one hundred matter overwhelmingly well, not overwhelmingly, but certainly, the more popular answer was yes, but to those in it, more than yes in general to the outside people and and and kind of everyone else. So do you think, to your point about clients and and services, do you think position ranking to in in any list of any size or or kind of any credibility, do you think it matters to the end user, or do you think it’s more an internal metric, or is it more just a kind of an industry metric? You know, what is you know, does size matter? I think there’s a good question. Russell, does size matter? So if we look at the end consumer being the client base, and, obviously, my my legacy firm was a sort of rural practice in based in North Devon. Now all of a sudden, if I’m getting out to our client base saying we’re a a top ten private equity backed aggregator, they’re like, you’re too far too big for us now. Even though it’s the same team, the same people doing the work at the same location, largely for the same fee, but we can deliver so many more services than we ever have been able to for you before. There there is a perception of you’re too big for us and then all of the other perceptions that go along with that. What I would say, though, is it does also then have the opposite effect of attracting clients that you may have not been able to attract before. So there there there’s both good and bad with all of it. And And then similarly from a staff base as well, again, there’s there’s there’s pros and cons, from both sides. But I think in terms of just focusing on revenue and we we lead table everything in life. Right? And you have to put a metric on it, and it’ll always be a controversial metric because somebody will focus on something else. I think revenue is a good indicator in terms of size and scale. There are other indicators that you we could look at in terms of delivery model, quality of service, variety of service spread, all that sort of stuff as well. So I think, you know, whilst size of the metric, I think it’s a valid metric for the size and scale of the the practices in our industry. My caveat would be at consolidated level because I think that the breakout of the aggregators is kind of muddying the water a little bit, and we we saw that this year. So I think it is relevant still, but but I think there are also other markets that we we could also top one hundred, and give you a much different list. Yeah. That’s a that’s an interesting point. Sarah, internally for you, you’ve been through huge growth over the last eighteen months. Is it obviously, it will matters internally to the partners and and and the owners of the business. But but from a staff perspective, what’s the impact of your staff as Shaw Gibbs has grown kind of exponentially over the last few years? What do they feel? Are they kind of do they look at, like, rankings and and position, and and do they have that same sense of pride and ownership in it, or is it something that you’re kind of fostering within the culture? Firstly, I hope so. It it’s something that that we very much publicized internally over the last week or two and something that we’re we’re seeing to celebrate. I think we’re only happy to celebrate it knowing that our staff retention is also very, very positive and that we’re seeing that uptick in our employee engagement surveys and what have you as well. So internally, like Russell said, there’s other metrics that are as important. And I think it’d be utterly fascinating to see this list cut on other metrics such as EBITDA or or staff retention or what have you. Yes. I mean, staff retention, you know, in a in a in an industry that’s struggling with talent and and talent retention, I think measuring a list based on staff retention would tell you a a a very different story. Or from conversations that that that you have with both on the the acquirer side and and the accounting firm size, you know, does size matter? I think I mean, going back to the point I made earlier, I think it’s it’s important in terms of having the the level of profitability for investment. I think for clients, I don’t think it makes any difference whether you are thirtieth or fiftieth in a list. It might make the difference between if you’re tenth or a hundredth, but the the closeness of the rankings, I don’t think, is significant. I think it’s useful for people, as you mentioned, for suppliers to the industry to know who sits where and what’s what what are the different sides of the firms. I think it’s helpful for, recruiters and particularly graduates moving into the, the sector to understand where firms sit. But I think it’s more about generally around the size rather than the specific ranking that’s important. I love that point about graduates. I just wanna unpack that for a second. Because I think, actually, probably, we don’t think about that, as an industry as a whole, but but you’re right. I remember I mean, I say I remember when I was back at university, it was a it was a fair long time ago. Right? But, when you have your careers fed, you generally would go over to the the the bigger companies, the bigger names. You’d research them. You you’d see where they were and compare comparison to their competitors, and you’d be like, if I was looking at the accounting industry, I’d be if Shaw Gibbs turned up to or Gravatar turned up to a a careers fair. Well, I talked to those guys because they’re growing. They’re expanding. They’re they’re kind of acquiring, they’re quite dynamic businesses. They would definitely get that attraction from me. So, yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point in a in a industry that that is struggling to retain, attract, and grow staff. Yeah, maybe that is a a really important measure. Russell, is that do do you kind of leverage that at all in in any of your graduate activities within Gravatar or kind of outreach to to universities or colleges, or do you go for a different approach? I think, like, to Paul’s point, it’s very useful in terms of just positioning yourself what the intent is of the practice, where you’re looking to go in the market. And I think it does set a bit of a precedent where historically, you’ve been aggregating all these firms. They’re they’re they’re separately, individually independent, and they’ve all got their own different approaches. And when we talk about talent retention or talent attraction, it’s a lot it’s a lot more difficult when you’re trying to do that just sort of handcuffed to, like, a local sort of, sort of location as well. So I think it does it does really help. We’re we’re quite vocal around, you know, what we’re what we’re trying to achieve, where we’re going to the market, where we’re trying to, differentiate ourselves. But I do think, like, just from a going back to the size piece, but still I think that’s not necessarily, indicative of the overall because you very much, like, culturally still have different approaches based on location as, you know, you you sort of grow and scale. So, yeah, I think it provides intent in terms of where you’re looking to move the business and gives any new sort of, starter or graduate, looking to join a good idea of what they’re joining and shows me appetite of of what they’re sort of, gonna expect going into that practice. Yeah. I think that’s I think that’s a really, really good point. So we’ve talked about kind of trends. We’ve talked about kind of the surge in m and a activity, and we we’ve touched on size. One of the things that all of you have mentioned individually is, I guess, the impact and opportunity that investment and and m and a brings to a practice. And, you know, full disclosure, Sarah, Russell, you’re both on this call because you are users of Silverfin and and and that technology. Right? And you’re utilizing the technology you have as part of your growth and and kind of streamlined of firms. But what challenges or or opportunities have has the kind of m and a created within, Shaw Gibbs, Sarah? And then, Russell, I’ll come to you, and then Paul will get your view from from as well. But kind of, you know, that that rapid expansion, rapid growth, what opportunities does it bring you? And and I guess what challenges is it presented as well? Absolutely. And I and I think we’ve touched on it already in so many different ways in terms of that scale and that investment that that brings or that opportunity for investment. And as a real life example, the latest to much larger mergers that we’ve done, most of them were looking at platforms such as Silverfin, but had chosen to put them to one side because as a standalone business, they just didn’t quite have the bandwidth to to make that investment. So they already you know, one of them only having joined us a month or so ago has automatically joined the Silverfin Champions Group and is very keen to roll it out very, very quickly. So that’s just something they couldn’t have done in in their old business. We whilst we have to be careful of our overheads and then perhaps people that have failed with these types of models in the past, you know, we now have a learning and development team of three. One of the main attractions for more senior members of the team joining us at Shaw Gibbs is that management development program. And, again, in some of these acquired businesses, they just didn’t have that level of investment or or or team to help them support that. So there’s huge opportunities ultimately for our people and our customers because, again, the level of tax expertise that both of our businesses are now able to deliver, we just didn’t have at our fingertips as independent businesses. Yeah. That’s interesting. So kind of ability to deliver more rounded services and ability to streamline technology. And I think we’ve all heard the the the horror stories around some of the m and a activity at the early days of this trend where they were buying firms with multiple conflicting technologies and multiple conflicting processes and then trying to build trying to get them all to operate under the same banner and the same workflow, and and it clearly never works. I remember a long time ago, I went to visit firm and I had a a conversation. It was an older gentleman. He’d he’d had the firm for twenty five years maybe, and he was looking to exit. But his technology stack was was really old. Like, there was yeah. He wasn’t he’s barely using past Excel, but, like, the the bookkeeping was very manual. The receipts were very manual, and he wanted to try and get two or three times revenue as a as a sale multiplier. And we kind of I’ve gotta put me in contact with with someone like Paul. If I’d known Paul at the time, it would have been with Paul, but someone like Paul to say, actually, you’re not going to get to that point with the technology stack that you have and with the the clients in in the state that they’re in because, ultimately, no one wants to buy that level of complexity and confusion when, actually, there’s another practice next to you that could plug straight in. And I know we’ve discussed this, Sarah, previously. You’re quite, you this what it’s a consideration in your m and a journey, isn’t it? The technology and and how that firm is set up currently. Yeah. Increasingly, certainly, as we said earlier, as acquisitions are becoming slightly larger, the the time and the investment and then having to unwind systems to then fall into our systems also becomes proportionately larger. And so that’s always my biggest piece of advice to to independent firms. I totally respect your independence, and it may be like that for decades to come, but it may also not be. So my advice is to run your firm as if you were looking to exit. And if you don’t, then then then so be it. Oh, good advice. Oh, what’s the what are the kind of key challenges and opportunities you’ve seen both within your time at Blick when you were kind of, you know, going through this early part of the journey and starting this trend, but also now from from the other side of the of of the table a little bit. So I think and on the opportunities, we’ve we’ve touched on some of the main ones in terms of, investment in technology, breadth of services to clients. Couple of specific things, I think at Blick Rothenberg as a partnership, we would we would have lateral hires come in, but the the investments on a year basis, you wouldn’t wanna run too quickly because sometimes they didn’t work. There’s always a lead time before you get a return on the investment. And, obviously, as partners, you know, we wanted to protect our earnings each year. But in in the PE model where it’s slightly different and you’ve got the investment, you are able to go out and recruit people more quickly than you might otherwise have done. So, certainly, at Pippenburgh post sale, we had a significant uptick in the number of lateral hires that we brought in, particularly in specialist areas to strengthen, you know, the tax team, for example. I think the other thing that we’ve not touched on, is actually the involvement of the, the people at the p p firms. So at Blick Waffenburn, I sat on board, and we had, two people from HG who were who came to the board meetings. And and one of, in particular, I thought was, you know, super smart. I mean, I thought we were really well run practice, but it definitely upped our game, provided good insight, and helped take the business forward. And I think that sometimes get gets overlooked. It’s not just the it’s not just the money they’re bringing, but they’re bringing some some expertise as well. I think in terms of challenges, I’m not sure it’s specifically related to PE. I think it’s more to do with fast growth firms. Because, obviously, on any acquisition, as you grow as you grow quickly, you wanna protect the culture, so making sure you’re acquiring firms that are are a good fit with you. Obviously, spending more time on communication to make sure people understand the journey that you’re going on, I think that’s that’s critical. Yeah. The the the communication piece is is really interesting. I think, like, it’s very easy to forget, the people in in in the practice and and certainly people have been there for a long time, and they see the investment come in and and and, you know, they might equate that to to, you know, streamlining or or changes. And and whatever happens, there’s gonna be changes in bringing people on that journey. Russell, I’ll come to you with this question a minute, but, actually, I just wanna reference back to working with Shaw Gibbs recently. I was part of a rollout of of Silverfin in in there. And one of the things that that wowed me about the rollout was how Sarah and the senior team joined groups of, people that were gonna be adopting Silverfin and and and shared that vision and shared that kind of approach with them to very much bring them on the journey. And my assumption is that’s what you do, Sarah, for for all of the kind of your key projects. But but, you know, how important is it to to it’s a silly question. Right? But it’s something I think we forget. How important is it to make sure that that whilst you at a senior level have the vision that your team understands and have bought into that vision as well? Yeah. Absolutely. I I I completely, confirm what you’ve just said. I think I think, actually, as as aggregators, we are better now at communicating with our teams. I think the pension needs to swing back a little to making sure we’re also now looking and making sure we’re building firms that our clients want and our clients are happy with. Because, ultimately, you refer back to that question, why is there so much PE investment in the industry? It’s because of that recurring fee base. We only have that recurring fee base as long as we have the clients. So, absolutely, communication staff retention, but making sure we’re also now checking back in with our client base to make sure we’re fulfilling their needs. Yeah. And I think, ultimately, we haven’t spoken about the client very much on this conversation, but the client is is so critical to to to all of this because, ultimately, if all the clients, leave and and and go elsewhere, You may have a wonderfully streamlined technologically savvy business with some bought in staff, but, you know, you have some very empty conversations at the end of the year. Russell, you’ve done this journey a couple of times. Right? So, from two different, from a few different perspectives. What are some of the opportunities that that you’ve seen and and then off the back of that, some of the challenges that that have arisen that that people can learn from and that you’ve learned from maybe? Yeah. So I think without covering what the guys have already said on the call, because, obviously, you know, economies of scale, buying power, all of that sort of great stuff, is is one of the the huge benefits. I think for me as well is the variety. I’m a product of this myself. Right? I came from, a professional background. I was on a partner track type, plan, and being in this space afforded me to take a step in a different direction. So whilst I was an accountant, I probably didn’t want to forever be an accountant and be in that bucket. Whereas now there’s so many, different opportunities and different roles that we can we can build out for teams. Like, you can really help foster, more career development pathways. You know, we’ve we’ve seen it in various firms where they’re investing in, transformation, change management. You’ve got teams with, you know, project managers, business analysts, data analysts. Like, a lot of these guys have come and pivoted from within the business. It’s not always external hires. And then you’ve got people like Paul who’s then pivoted out from that kind of, you know, operational role within practice as well. So for me, like, one of the benefits, and I’m definitely a product of the benefit, is the opportunity out there to to move and create these different roles and niches, for yourself. With that, obviously, is the the challenges for me, the biggest one and Paul did kinda steal it a little bit, before I got a chance to say it. For me, it’s always culture, and you can unpack culture in lots different ways, but the biggest challenge for, any aggregator is understanding first and foremost what culture they want to develop and what that wants to look like for their business. And then how on earth do you get that between five firms, ten firms, twenty firms, fifty firms, however you consolidate over time? Because it’s really, really hard. And I’ve been through this journey a few times in different different ways, but both from being acquired and acquiring. And I always come back to culture being the biggest challenge. And bringing your staff, your clients along on that journey is really hard, but the benefit is that you can then stand these teams to support that up at the same time. So when we go back to legacy firms to implement, as Sarah said, new platform solutions processes really hard from a cost investment and a time investment. And a lot of time, people are doing this off the side of their desks. They’ve got their day job. They focus on their day job. They do this in the evening or or or in their own time. But being able to to have an infrastructure that we can build to support this, I think is a huge benefit and one that I I didn’t see in early m and a. But in more recent m and a, people are absolutely more focused on supporting the change, the transformation, the people part. And I think that’s where we’re seeing a lot of this surge off the back is there’s better infrastructure now for growth. I think there’s a whole webinar that we could run just around the culture element of, yeah, aligning a cultural fit within a business. And, you know, Silverfin has been through this a little bit as well. We were acquired last year by, Visma. And, of course, Visma are a a huge one of the largest European tech companies out there. One that that maybe is a little bit under the radar in the UK because we’re their first UK acquisition, but we’ve had to kind of not had to, but we’ve become part of that Visma family, and that brings some fantastic benefits. And it brings some some weird quirky changes that you kinda go, oh, we have to now do that, which we didn’t have to do. And it’s it’s nothing huge, but it’s one of those little things that’s just slightly changed. And and somewhere, it will impact someone within the business in a different way. There’s definitely a whole, webinar around the cultural thing. Sarah, Russell, I’m gonna come back to you at the end with one question. Right? So I’m gonna give you a couple of seconds to think about this while I ask Paul something different. I want you to think about, like, the one thing, your one learning that you’ve had over the past eighteen months in the journeys that you’ve both been on. What’s kind of your key learning? So I’ll give you a couple of seconds to think about that whilst I ask Paul a question. Paul, I wanna because Russell points out really, really neatly that you’ve jumped from, you jumped. It sounds quite dramatic. Right? You’ve gone from one side to to the other. For you, what’s been the most interesting thing looking at the world from the perspective you now see it as opposed to maybe you were before? So was there something maybe maybe like, something you thought was one way, but actually now you’re where you are, you you look at it and go, oh, actually, that that’s changed. Or or isn’t there anything? Maybe it’s exactly as you expected. That’s that’s a difficult question. I think I mean, there’s been lots of changes from going working in a firm as a partner as part of a board to going to working for myself. So all the things that yeah. I miss the, you know, the the camaraderie being part of a longer journey. So that those things will change. In terms of looking at accounts, you’ve earned some, you know, the outside looking in, I’m not sure I’ve seen that much that in other firms that I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have have seen at at Blick Rothenberg. I think we were we invested quite heavily, and Russell touched on it. We we invested quite heavily in the support functions even before we went, on the PE journey and and doing acquisitions. So we had a good infrastructure to manage whether that’s HR, IT projects, me sitting across all the areas. I think I’ve seen I’ve seen a few firms go on the journey and not invest quick enough, so I think that’s really important to have the right the right infrastructure in place. Yeah. That I think that’s I think that’s actually probably the best probably the best learning you can have, right, is is is make sure the infrastructure in place and make sure that you can keep pace with the aspiration. I think that’s always a a tough one. So, Sarah, I’ll come to you first. What’s your kind of key learning over the past eighteen ish months that you would take forward and and, you know, not certainly do differently, but maybe something that just you’ve kinda gone actually, we did that quite well. Well, so there have been thousands, first of all, being honest. But probably the key learning, and and you will have heard me say this before, and we’ve already evolved our approach, is that when we merge with the business on day one, just being hugely open and honest about the change that will come. And most of it is changed to to systems, tech systems, rather than actually going along for a couple of months and then being honest about that change. So, you know, within the first week or two of of working with the business, we will sit down as a senior leadership team from from both businesses and work through the integration of every single part of our business. So all of the support functions, all of the service lines, so everyone is very clear from the outset what that looks like. It’s not to say all of it will change on day one, but everyone is then very clear about the timelines for for every part of our business. And like I say, that’s something we’ve evolved already. Amazing. I think that’s, some, a really good thing to take away. Russell, how about for you? For me, it always comes back to people. So my focus would would it is always on the people element. The biggest change impact is always to the people. Yes. There are processes and platforms and technology and all of this sort of good stuff, but the people have to use it and follow it. So the biggest impact I see going into any change and what I’ve sort of thought about over the last sort of eighteen months, but my last sort of nearly twelve months with Graviton now is is that people impacts. Like, the majority of the staff didn’t ask for this. They’re just part of the journey. Right? But they have to accept it and get on with it. So for me, it’s always think about the people, think about the communication, how it impacts them, and how you can support them through that sort of life cycle that they’re ultimately gonna go through, you know, the good days, the bad days, and all the indifferent. Yeah. I love that. Put the people, put the people first, which is, fantastic. Now, I’m hoping you can see if I put a slide up, is that worked? Maybe not. That’s fine. Okay. I’ll try that one again. Best intentions. So, look, I just wanna say, Russell, Paul, Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a really genuinely interesting chat. And, you know, we we started off by kind of framing this around kind of, you know, the top one hundred firms and and where that sits within the the UK. But, actually, like, the the wider conversation around kind of m and a, the impact of of private, equity and and the impact on on businesses and and everything else, I think, is is a really interesting conversation. And, certainly, we’ve seen the impact it’s had to the largest firms in the UK over the past twelve months, and I don’t foresee that slowing down over over the next twelve months. We have a funny if we have an industry channel, in Slack at work, and what we do is we post kind of key key kind of events and happenings. And and it’s it’s jokingly because it’s a global channel. Everyone in Silverstone had it. It jokingly become known as the UK m and a channel because pretty much every day, there’s a new m and a story from the UK that goes in, and it’s a it’s it’s a super interesting conversation. So, again, thank you, thank you all for joining us. So, I’ve just popped up on screen, which I know you can see now, just to say thank you for, everyone for joining us. If you’d like to know a little bit more about Silverfin, we have a live overview webinar on the fifteenth of January. So a thirty minute quick look at what Silverfin does, and my colleague, Mark, will be hosting that. And, you know, if if you’re interested in in finding out a little bit more about Silverfin, and how we work with firms, that’s a really good opportunity for for you to do that. And, you know, probably less we’ve we’ve not much more to say than, you know, thank you all for joining us today. Thank you, to my guests for giving up your time and and bringing, you know, quite interesting, very interesting conversation. And I look forward to to speaking you, speaking to you all again in the future. And, yeah, have a great rest of your Thursday, and thanks very much for joining.