By Karen Peattie
A FINANCIAL services firm based in Montrose claims to have “broken the mould” by becoming the first Scottish business in its sector to become entirely employee-owned.
All shares of Gill Financial have now been placed into an employee ownership trust (EOT), with all seven staff becoming direct beneficiaries of the partnership. The trust will take on full ownership immediately, securing the future of the company which looks after £100 million of assets for its clients.
The development is part of a strategy by founder Roy Gill, who launched the best with his wife, Lesley, in 2000 and has never previously contemplated selling the firm “despite receiving multiple emails most weeks from prospective buyers”. Mr Gill said: “An acquisition would have put so much at risk and I hated the thought of that. For a start I didn't want any of our staff's futures put into uncertainty, or for the culture to change so significantly they felt forced to leave.
“Likewise, we know we deliver great value for our clients across pensions, investment and mortgage advice. The brand has been built up through hard work – and that’s a precious thing.
“More often than not IFAs are swallowed up by consolidators, with customers seeing increased fees and staff adapting to new ways of working. We had to break the mould.”
All employees will benefit from a share of any profits and the Gills will remain with the business until the handover takes place over the next three to four years, with Mr Gill taking a less active role.
Gill Financial worked with Stirling-based Ownership Associates, a specialist consultancy that takes companies through each step of the journey towards employee ownership. The deal was supported by Lindsays Solicitors with accountancy guidance provided by MMG Archbold.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel