I'm Ashish Khanna, I'm a partner at L.E.K. based in London. I lead our financial services practice in Europe.
So, perhaps you're the chief executive of a consolidated firm. Perhaps you're the chief executive or the chief financial officer of an incumbent tradition wealth manager. Perhaps you're an investor looking to take positions in this wealth management market. We're respective of those, I think it's important for you to think about the sector holistically. What we typically find is a firm may just focus on M&A excellent, or it may just focus on organic growth. What we really encourage our clients to think about is the holistic proposition. You cannot isolate yourself to be just an organic growth player, or just an M&A growth player. Successful value creation strategies are going to be a combination thereof, complimented by operational excellence.
If you're going to be developing an M&A pipeline, you're going to be asked to participate in a relatively frothy acquisitions market where everyone is bidding top pound, top dollar to acquire those businesses. If you are going to be an efficient acquirer of those businesses it's important that you're able to draw as much synergy value, whether it is in the organic growth, whether it's in the top line performance, whether it is through your investment management proposition, or very well through a best in breed operational capability that you get cost synergies out of. This is where actually magic happens in the industry. It's all parts of the proposition hanging together.
Our encouragement to our clients is think about the business holistically, not just inside out, but actually outside in as the industry around you evolves. What's the business model that's required to succeed today, three years from today, a decade from today? And build towards that outcome.
