The critical factor in creating interest from potential acquirers of financial planning practices is ensuring the business is unique in comparison to its competitors, according to Count Financial founder Barry Lambert.
“What we did was position Count in a way so it would be attractive if someone wanted to buy us and that’s very important,” Lambert told delegates at a No More Practice seminar recently held in Sydney.
“You’ve got to position yourselves to be different. So we positioned Count so there is no other business like Count.
“It became a situation where if somebody wanted that sort of a business, there was only one to buy and that was Count.”
In commenting about the sale of the accounting and financial advisory firm he set up to Commonwealth Bank of Australia, he said that organisation was the only one to approach Count with a firm offer.
“Nobody ever made an offer and the Commonwealth Bank a year ago now said ‘Barry, we’d like to make an offer for Count but we’ll only do that if in fact you’re happy with that’,” he said
He also outlined the reasons why the offer was accepted..
“Why did we accept that offer? Well we had the GFC (global financial crisis), the company had been through some changes, I was not as active in the business as I once had been because I wanted to hand it over to some people, we were kicking some own goals in my view and Count was not going as well as it should’ve been, although that could be turned around with the right management,” he said.
“For all of those reasons the directors had no hesitation in accepting the offer.”
The founder of Count revealed timing in terms of company share price had nothing to do with the decision.
“This was the first real offer that was put on the table and the directors thought it was a good offer and in the best interest of the shareholders,” he said.
