Employees buy North East Financial Planner

The firm announced its plans in March 2020, just before the lockdowns began, and converted to employee ownership today. 

Chartered Financial Planner Gemma Siddle, director of client services, said: “The transaction has completed today for Eldon Financial Planning to become employee-owned with 100% of shares now held by the trust. We’re delighted and excited for the future.”

In an exclusive Q&A in Financial Planning Today magazine two years ago, managing director Tony Conner and award-winning Eldon director of client service Gemma Siddle, talked about plans for employee ownership for the firm which sees staff as ‘family’ and goes to great lengths to develop long-term relationships with clients.

You can view the Q&A here http://bit.ly/30ra4a5 

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Eldon is now owned by an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) – the so-called ‘John Lewis’ model.

Mr Conner said the firm had ruled out a sale to a third party as too big a risk to the firm’s personal service ethos.

In the Q&A, Mr Conner, a Chartered Financial Planner, said: “We have always considered Eldon as a family rather than a group of employees. A sale to a third party could have led to too many changes and too great a risk to the people involved. The answer for us is to transfer the ownership of the business to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT).”

The company is following a growing trend for some Financial Planning firms to become employee owned. Bristol-based Paradigm Norton and Ovation Finance have both gone down this route.

Eldon, based in Newton Aycliffe, near Darlington, has doubled in size over the past six years and plans to take on more Chartered Financial Planners at a steady pace.

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