A decade of deals: Lee Hartley on Fairstone's ten years in consolidation

November marked a decade of consolidation deals for Chartered firm Fairstone as the total number of IFA businesses under its brand reached 53. Though, as chief executive Lee Hartley (pictured) points out, that number frequently changes as firms going through its downstream buyout model (DBO) reach the finish line. Fairstone, he says, is a consolidator that does things differently from its peers and is proud to do so. But it did not begin that way. "We did not start out with the intention of being a ‘consolidator', we just wanted to scale up," he recalls. "In 2011 we started acquiri...