Martin Baines

Martin Baines is a veteran UK wealth-management executive who spent the bulk of his career at Cheviot Investment Management and its successor, Quilter Cheviot. He joined the firm as an investment manager in 1994 and was appointed Chief Executive in 2003. He holds a BA (Hons) in Economics and is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI), with more than two decades of investment-management experience.

As CEO, Baines led some of the defining corporate transactions in the modern UK wealth sector: he oversaw the leveraged buyout of Quilter from Morgan Stanley (completed 2012), the acquisition of Cheviot Investment Management (creating Quilter Cheviot), and the subsequent sale of the business to Old Mutual Wealth Group in 2014. Following a rebrand to Quilter, the group listed on the London Stock Exchange in a 2018 IPO valued at roughly £3 billion. Companies House records show Baines resigned his Quilter Cheviot Holdings and Quilter Cheviot Limited directorships on 13 December 2018.

After leaving Quilter Cheviot, Baines moved into private equity and advice-sector consolidation. He became a director of Amber River Group (appointed May 2019) — the group formed from Socium, the private-equity-backed advice network he co-founded with former Openwork CEO Mary-Anne McIntyre, which acquired the Beaufort Group. Since 2020–2021 he has been a member/partner across the Heligan Group entities (Heligan Corporate Finance, Heligan Wealth Management, Heligan Investments and GPE Capital Partners), where he focuses on private-equity investment and fundraising for the group.

Most recently he has continued to take board and partner roles across UK wealth firms — appointed a director of Hay Hill Wealth Management (November 2023) and TAM Financial Ltd (April 2024) — while serving as Managing Partner of Heligan Wealth Management and a Non-Executive Director at Amber River. He remains FCA-authorised.

• Invests and advises through private equity and corporate finance rather than venture/seed — his activity centres on buyouts, capital-raising and consolidation of IFAs, advice networks and wealth managers.
• Core view that private equity is the driving force consolidating the fragmented UK IFA/advice market, and that scale increasingly wins as larger firms come to dominate.
• On what makes a good deal, he stresses that expertise and adaptability are the crucial factors when acquiring financial firms — cultural and operational fit over pure financials.
• Believes that despite technology and AI, "personal relationships remain central to client trust and long-term success in wealth management" — a people-first lens on the businesses he backs.
• Brings a hands-on operator's perspective: he has personally led buyout, integration and exit transactions (Quilter/Morgan Stanley/Old Mutual), not just financed them.