Donald Reid

It's also interesting though, because sort of 10, 20 years ago, a number of those professional services firms went through the process of divesting themselves from their financial planning arms.

So things do go around in cycles, but that's certainly a trend we're seeing this year.

And of course, the other trend is interest from the US, not so much in terms of US PE, that sits under the PE umbrella, but other US advisory firms.

So Raymond James is a massive US advisory firm.

They acquired

They had a presence in the UK, but they acquired Charles Stanley about three years ago.

And then earlier this year, Corriant, who again, a large US advisory firm, announced the acquisition of Stonehenge Fleming and Stanhope Capital.

And what we hear is that there are other large US advisory firms who are also looking to go global.

and break into the UK market.

And you have to remember the UK market is still incredibly fragmented.

There's investable wealth of over 3 trillion, but there are still 5,500 firms that are authorized by the FCA to provide financial planning advice.

So it's still a very, very fragmented market.

Private equity has had a massive impact.

There are about

45 firms that are owned by PE.

And we've mentioned some of those already, and many of those are on the acquisition trail.

So I think the dynamics will continue as we go into 2026.

Our view is that we will still continue to see significant opportunities for consolidation.

I think the challenge will be as PE-backed consolidators get bigger, and it's out in the public domain that there are probably five or six of those consolidators that are on the market at the moment.

So we will see potentially consolidation of the consolidators.