So we did a Thing and the Thing went well, and as a result the Update this week will be particularly insufferable – and I realise we’re grading on a curve here – as I pick over the bones of HomeGame 4 to bring you some diverting brain fodder for your Wednesday lunchtime. 

HomeGame 4 wasn’t a safe event; we tried a bunch of things, not least of which was using a venue in a way the venue owners had never intended. But everyone rose to the occasion and magnificence was all around. If you are in Edinburgh and you want to go somewhere really nice, with awesome baking and very excellent people, then I heartily recommend Patina. You won’t lose weight but you will be happy. Do you know what I learned about the bakery there? They don’t just buy butter in blocks. They buy it in 2.5kg sheets to make lamination of their croissants easier. Did you know sheet butter was a thing? I didn’t. I do now.  

One of the things that made the day was how few badges remained uncollected. Of nearly 200 folk, we only had half a dozen badges left on the table – 97% of attendees showed. That’s such a big deal to any event organiser. It meant the room was packed – people were standing – and there was such a buzz and energy about it. We’re hugely grateful to everyone for making the effort. 

Real talk (as the kids say) – it amazes me how thoughtless people are when they just don’t turn up for events they’ve booked onto. Yes, emergencies and illnesses and travel woes happen, but I think I speak for everyone who’s ever run a conference when I say: if you know you’re not going to make it have the courtesy to let the organisers know, as far in advance as you can. Maybe they can shift your ticket on to someone else. 

Anyway, the main sessions will go up on YouTube at some point, but you can find press reports here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here. I think that’s most of them. Also: Rory Bremner did a Consumer Duty gag and you don’t get much better than that. 

One of the speakers that will live long in the mind was the incredible Laura Young of Cairn Independent in Fife, who was open and extraordinarily brave about sharing her story. You could have heard a pin drop in the room.  

But let’s go past that for now and talk consolidation. We ran a session on big vs little in terms of advice firms, and that inevitably ended up being largely about consolidation. And, opening my regulatory hymnal yesterday, I find that the FCA has fired the starting gun on a review of the consolidation market.  

No-one that speaks at a conference is going to do anything other than state that good consumer outcomes are at the heart of the firm they work for, or are being bought by, or are buying. That’s a bit of language firms of all sizes have learned. Nonetheless, this is something that’ll be getting poked at; I think we have all seen deals done where it’s far from clear that shipping customers and their assets over to the new in-house CIP is locked on in terms of suitability but where it is very clear that, ahem, other factors may be at play.  

Consolidation is now such an established trend that it was always inevitable we’d see some digging in from East London at the intersection of commerciality and customer outcomes. This story from Justin Cash is a good example – everything might be well above board, but my goodness it’s a difficult look to carry off.  

You’ll remember what happened to many retail businesses who went on debt-fuelled growth trips when the tide went out. Most high streets still have too many vacant units as a result. And so when the review of consolidation starts talking about wanting to know that acquiring firms can service their debt mountain – this is a different kind of mountain to the famous butter mountain of yesteryear, which presumably got made into sheets and then into Viennoiserie – you know alarm bells are ringing.  

I’m still not sure the consolidation market as it stands doesn’t break apart at some point in the next few years; we heard real benefits about being part of a bigger outfit, but also a compelling and spirited defence of small firms from people who work in them. For as long as diseconomies of scale in terms of customer outcomes exist, so will that uncertainty.  

• And your music choice this week is a special one for the nice chap who stopped me at HomeGame and bemoaned the fact that I hadn’t put anything really heavy in for a while. Noooooooo problemo chief. Please join him in appreciating four minutes of proper old school death metal from Undeath, with Brandish The Blade. You may wish to jump around on your bed to this; please do take precautions.   

I’m away next week speaking at a thing in South Africa. I’ll send you their regards. Steve will be your Updater and I hope you will be nice. 

Laters 

Mark