Louise Jeffreys

Louise Jeffreys is the founder and Managing Director of Gunner & Co., a Bristol-based M&A consultancy and brokerage that specialises in negotiating the buying and selling of independent financial adviser (IFA), financial planning and wealth management businesses. A self-described "third-generation Bristolian," she studied French at university — spending six months teaching at a technical college in Bayonne, France — and graduated in 2001. Her early career was varied: she briefly trained as Virgin Atlantic cabin crew before being laid off in the aftermath of 9/11, then built a marketing career abroad, joining the Institute for International Research in Dubai as a trainee marketing manager and rising to marketing director for the Middle East. She was later headhunted to a New York role before returning to the UK as chief marketing officer for a Bristol events and conferences business.

She founded Gunner & Co. in 2014, after roughly a decade in general management and marketing roles internationally. The launch coincided with the Retail Distribution Review (RDR) era, when many advisers were reassessing their futures and an M&A market for advice firms was just taking shape. A connection made through playing softball in Bristol — with the founder of a financial publication — helped seed the idea. Jeffreys is candid that she began with "limited knowledge of the M&A market" and "no previous desire to run my own company," crediting a "fake it 'till you make it" mindset and her marketing background for helping her position advice businesses for the best possible exit.

Today she runs the firm day to day, leading the deal team from preparation through completion and placing particular emphasis on educating both buyers and sellers through workshops, webinars and online guides. Gunner & Co. describes itself as the leading independent brokerage and consultancy in the IFA M&A space, with a high win-rate driven by a focus on quality opportunities. Beyond the business, Jeffreys leads the firm's philanthropic activities and serves as a trustee of Do Slumthing, one of its two chosen charities. She is a keen runner (a Peloton enthusiast, training toward completing the six World Marathon Majors before age 50) and has a young son, Freddie.

• Gunner & Co. is a sell-side and buy-side M&A adviser/broker, not a capital provider — it structures and completes acquisitions, mergers and succession/exit deals for financial-advice firms rather than writing investment cheques.
• Focus is squarely on UK IFA, financial planning and wealth management businesses, matching retiring or exiting principals with acquirers/consolidators and running the transaction end to end.
• Jeffreys' stated approach: *"I love getting under the bonnet of a business; looking at the mechanics of what makes it great"* — a diligence-led philosophy of understanding a firm's operations before positioning it for sale.
• She emphasises quality over volume, citing an unwavering focus on high-quality opportunities as the reason for the firm's market-leading win-rate.
• A recurring market view she shares: consolidators are increasingly targeting larger advice firms (c. £70m+ in assets under advice/management) because integration effort demands scale — a dynamic sellers of smaller books should factor into their exit planning.