50 Years

  • Est. 1973

    After an early career in the Insurance sector, the company was formed by Keith Montgomery in Bristol on 9th April 1973. At a time when large corporations dominated Financial Services and the companies making up the FTSE 30 were at risk of total collapse, setting up a small business to provide an improved investment and insurance service to private clients was no small task.

  • Navigating uncertainty

    Many market cycles have run their course over the last five decades. Runaway inflation, tech bubbles, wars, financial crashes and global pandemics. We have seen it all.

    Having lived through the good times and the bad, we have learnt from past events to focus on the big picture in the face of uncertainty.

  • Fifty years on

    As the decades have passed and the company has grown we have evolved and adapted to the economic conditions of the time. Although the landscape has shifted a great deal, some things never change. We have stuck to our principles and continue to offer a first class investment management and financial advice service to our clients.

    Today we manage £90 million of assets on behalf of nearly 200 clients.

Where it Started

The company started in 1973, based at Keith Montgomery’s home office at Sheiling House in south Bristol. Working from home was a pioneering move in the 70s, something which has become part of everyday life today. As the team grew in the first nine years there came a need for a larger premises.

This letter to clients dated November 1981 gives an insight into the company’s operations when the move to Tallut House was announced. Funds under management had just exceeded £5m (the equivalent of £17m in today’s money) and two new members of staff had recently joined.

“Both my grandparents and parents have entrusted their investments to you for over 45 years and I did the same.

From the beginning I have felt like a valued customer and am pleased to report my investments have had a healthy and profitable growth.”

Third-generation client

Ebb and Flow

It is difficult to think of a more challenging year for a new business start-up than 1973.

Interest rates were at 15%, inflation was over 20% by the mid-70s and global stock markets had suffered their heaviest falls since the Great Depression. Incredibly, in the UK the FTSE 30 index, as it was then, lost three quarters of its value from April 1972 to December 1974.

As the years rolled by markets rallied and economies flourished, however each decade seemed to come with its own crisis: Black Monday in October 1987, the Dotcom Bubble in 2000, the Credit Crunch of 2008 and more recently the Covid-19 Crash of 2020 and Cost of Living crisis in 2022.

Although navigating times of uncertainty is invariably uncomfortable, with the benefit of hindsight the common themes of patience and diversifying assets certainly hold true.

From the Archive

The discovery of this letter raised a smile. Dated a few weeks before the turn of the millennium, it gives an insight into overcoming fears of the unknown. Would computers across the world irreparably crash on 31/12/1999 at 23:59?

Investing in the future

If you would like to learn more about our service, please contact us to find out how we can help.