I don't know that this creates opportunity. SEQ was a large holding of mine and I have done exceptionally well out of it yet I have to say I am totally disappointed in it as well. I like GC and in fact I would call him a friend - I am no longer sure he calls me one. I have mostly sold out a few lying around but not material at all. Our experience was great and yet bad. Each has to make their own decisions, but over the period of our investment we felt that GC was over optimistic and that each year the presentation looked different. In one aspect GC was right and we were wrong and that was Morrisons - we could not see how this fitted into a (well what is SEQ - A wealth management business, a financial planning business or a technology business or a legal compliance business) Certainly in our opinion it wasn't a financial reporting business and we hated FNN and then GC went and bought Share Cafe etc.

I suppose this became the overwhelming feeling we had - That GC would put anything into it as there was no real planned business model. I don't think we blamed him it seems to be a mantra of most financial planning and advisor businesses at this moment. After the Royal Commission and the exit of banks and the older planners retiring the industry doesn't seem to know how it will unfold. I really thought that GC had the vision. So at first it was advisor numbers. Then it was compliance companies , including a training company and a family office etc. Right now I have no idea what to measure.

The other noise we suffered was a substantial shareholder arriving on a cheap entry after Sargon imploded and then the slow bleed of that stock into the market.

The best and biggest thing to happen here was for someone to come and offer what in my opinion is a huge price for Morrisons and after asking around I get the understanding that it is as much the technology and systems that Morrisons have as the brokerage firm. GC sold 80% of this for double my entire valuation of it. It is at a low because Brokers are doing it a lot tougher at the moment. so valuations should be lower.

My view is that as I understood it we were supposed to get or buy more advisor firms to become 800 planners we did not do that. There was and still is a logical move for CAF, DVR and WTL to look at how they can merge or even CUP. My view is that there are too many CEO's and not enough shareholders driving this right now so no-one seems to see that size does count.

So you are now left with GC and co and a lot of money. Do they spend it wisely. Based upon past performance we decided not to take that risk. Without the Morrisons deal there would have been a lot of blood on the street...

Add to that that the Share Cafe deal has not worked as I see it

This company did very well for me. We still hold but recently sold a large chunk. Our reasons were as follows:"

We / I recently had to interact with 3 different financial planners (none are SEQ affiliated) One could not explain why the portfolio was almost 70% in cash when the person was 93 and had so much money that they could never have spent until death even if they llived to 110. Given they were in a home and that the planner could easily have set aside the annual costs for 15 years and started to move some of the cash into equity in anticipation of the death of the person to protect the inheritance of the children. The second was advise to a single woman in her sixties to keep her life policy as it would pay off the mortgage if she died - so how that helps a struggling sixty year old woman I don't know. The third was the bizarre portfolio that had little of the usual suspects - So no BHP . no CBA no ARG ...

I then went further to try to understand why SEQ is a dogs breakfast. What is with owning Share Cafe ... The Morrison deal is absolutely great and well done to Management. However when it got mooted we tried to do a valuation of Morrison's and could not get beyond $20 million. We looked at other planning businesses and WT looked good but low valuation then CAF and DVR. What shocked us is they all have little bits added that don't look logical. In the end we felt that they should merge and asked around and found that the view was that none thought it could happen as the personalities didn't sound like they would fit.

The fundamental question for us was that there must be a cost to change the behaviours that the Royal commission found and in our view these businesses would have to foot that bill. Customers seem to already have bad experiences and are no longer just paying the fees. Gone are the days that this was an easy business.

We concluded that it wasn't surprising that SEQ hasn't accrued the insurance claim and then that may add risk to a share investment. We still hold our lowest cost parcel.