A founder came to us three months before completion with a lawyer, a tax adviser, a broker and an accountant already in place. What was missing was a conductor.
A founder approached us three months before the completion of a company sale. He was not short of advisers. He had a corporate lawyer, a tax specialist, a broker running the process and a long-standing accountant. What he did not have was anyone making sure they were working to the same plan.
Each adviser was doing good work inside their own remit. But no one was looking at the whole picture: how the deal structure interacted with his pension position, what the proceeds should do once they arrived, how his wife's tax allowances fit in, and what the estate consequences would be. Questions kept falling into the gaps between advisers.
We did not replace anyone. We sat above the group as the coordinating point, through our Guardian service, aligning the tax work with the wealth plan, briefing the lawyer on the structure that served the family rather than only the transaction, and making sure the pension contributions that made sense were actually made before the trading year closed.
By completion, the proceeds had a destination rather than a holding account, the 3Ls had been drawn before the money arrived, and the specialists had spent their time on their specialisms rather than chasing each other. The value we added was not a single clever idea. It was making six good advisers work as one team.