Wealth planning for business owners, founders, and senior executives.
The financial planning required around a business exit, an executive equity package, or the deployment of significant proceeds is materially different from the planning required for a salaried professional building wealth steadily over a career.
Different decisions, different tax architecture, different time pressures, different consequences for getting it wrong.
We work with clients at exactly these inflection points. Most come to us in the eighteen months to five years before a planned sale, in the period after a liquidity event has completed, or as senior executives whose unvested equity has become the dominant component of their net worth.
Selling your business
The work that materially changes the after-tax outcome of a business sale is almost always done before the sale completes, often years before.
By the time terms are agreed and a transaction is in motion, most of the structural levers have already moved out of reach. Business Asset Disposal Relief depends on share class and ownership periods that cannot be retrospectively created. Pension funding pre-completion is constrained by Annual Allowance, taper, and carry forward, none of which are recoverable after the event. EIS reinvestment timing has rules that punish lateness. Trusts and Family Investment Companies established post-completion sit in a different tax universe from those established beforehand.
The clients we work with on a planned exit typically engage with us between eighteen months and five years before sale. The earlier the engagement, the more the structural decisions are still genuinely available.
What we work on pre-sale
Capital gains tax structuring, including BADR planning across share classes and family ownership.
Pension funding ahead of completion, using full Annual Allowance and available carry forward where appropriate.
Trust structures and Family Investment Companies, established with sufficient lead time to be effective for IHT and succession.
Reinvestment planning into EIS, SEIS, and VCT where suitable, alongside more conventional portfolio deployment.
Pre-sale gifts and intergenerational planning that take advantage of pre-transaction valuations.
Coordination with corporate finance, legal counsel, and tax advisers, we do not replace these specialists, we plan around them.
After the liquidity event
The day the proceeds land, most founders are sitting on the largest single liquidity event of their lives, and the planning decisions get harder rather than easier.
Cash hoarding is the most common error, often eighteen months or more of inflation-eroded balances sitting in low-interest accounts because the psychological shift from concentrated business ownership to diversified portfolio is genuinely difficult. The opposite error, rapid deployment driven by anxiety to "do something" is almost as common.
Sophisticated post-exit planning addresses both ends of that spectrum. It builds a deployment plan with a clear timeline, defined risk capacity, and explicit recognition of the fact that someone who has just sold a business is rarely the same investor they were six months earlier.
What we work on post-exit
A staged deployment plan, calibrated against your actual time horizon and risk capacity.
Portfolio construction across whole-of-market discretionary, MPS, direct-equity, private market, and fixed-income solutions, selected for fit, not for distribution.
Tax wrappers used in the right order: pension funding (where available), ISAs annually, GIA layered with CGT and dividend allowance management, onshore and offshore bonds where the maths supports them.
Inheritance tax planning, including BPR-qualifying portfolios, lifetime gifting, gifts out of normal expenditure, and trust structures.
Structured income drawdown for clients who have transitioned out of the business and want a stable, tax-efficient income.
Executives with significant equity
Senior executives with significant LTIPs, RSUs, EMI options, or restricted shares face a different version of the same planning problem: a balance sheet dominated by a single equity position, with vesting schedules, lock-up periods, and tax events that drive most of the financial decisions.
The planning question is rarely about the underlying view on the company. It is about concentration risk, the tax cost of diversification, and the rate at which equity should be converted into a more durable financial structure.
What we work on for equity-rich executives
Vesting and exercise planning across LTIPs, RSUs, EMI, and restricted shares, including the income tax versus capital gains tax decisions where the architecture allows them.
Concentration risk analysis, with explicit modelling of what a company-specific drawdown would do to overall financial security.
Pension and ISA funding to absorb diversified proceeds tax efficiently.
Charitable giving via Gift Aid, gifts of shares to charity, and donor-advised funds where giving is part of the picture.
Coordination with the company’s share scheme administrator and your tax adviser, we plan around the architecture rather than rebuilding it.
Why independence matters here in particular
The technical work above is genuinely whole-of-market. The right BPR-qualifying portfolio for one client sits with one provider, for another client it sits with three different providers selected for specific characteristics. The right private market exposure depends on access and access varies. The right discretionary mandate for a £3m post-exit portfolio is not the same as the right discretionary mandate for a £15m post-exit portfolio.
In a restricted advice model, the answer to all of those questions is largely predetermined by the in-house panel. In our model, the answer is determined by the situation.
This is the area of advice where the difference between independent and restricted is most material and where it has the largest direct cost to a client who ends up with the wrong structure.
How an engagement begins?
Most clients engage with us through a complimentary discovery session, a thirty-minute conversation to understand the situation and whether independent advice is likely to add value. There is no obligation on either side.
If the fit is right, we produce a financial review report under a fixed fee, offset against any subsequent implementation work. From there, ongoing planning sits inside a clearly priced annual retainer. Fees and timelines are set out in pounds and pence before any chargeable work begins.
FAQs
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The honest answer is: as early as you can. The pension, BADR, share class, trust, and FIC decisions that materially change the after-tax outcome of a sale all benefit from time. Eighteen months before completion is workable, three to five years before completion is materially better. Engaging once a transaction is already in motion limits the planning to the smaller subset of decisions still genuinely available.
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We work with clients from £1m of investable assets, with most engagements between £2m and £25m. The planning required for clients in this segment is sufficiently complex that anything below £1m is unlikely to be a good fit for our model, we will say so directly during the discovery session if that is the case.
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We are not constrained to a panel of in-house funds, platforms, or managers. Our recommendation is determined by your situation and the most appropriate solution available across the whole UK market. We do not earn anything from where your money goes, only from the planning and ongoing advisory work we agree with you upfront in pounds and pence.
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No. Complex financial planning is genuinely a multi-disciplinary exercise. We coordinate alongside your tax adviser, corporate finance team, and legal counsel and bring in specialists where we don’t have the relevant capability internally. Most successful exits we work on involve four or five professional advisers in a coordinated relationship rather than a single firm trying to do everything.
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Fees are set out in full on the Fees page. The structure is: complimentary discovery session, fixed-fee financial review report (offset against any subsequent implementation), implementation fee on assets brought under advice, and a tiered ongoing fee scaled to the size of monitored assets. Every fee is agreed before any work begins.