Financial advisory has changed a lot in the last two decades

Artur Suits, the partner in charge of advisory services, says that the needs of clients in the financial advisory sector have also changed considerably in the last couple of decades. “Before the turn of the century, businesses were largely run on gut instinct and there was no need for advice until a foreign investor knocked on the door and wanted to buy your company,” he says. “The question was what price to sell for. This gave us the opportunity to assess the value of companies, and we also carried out due diligence audits on companies of interest to foreign buyers. Over the past decade, Estonian investors have also become more professional and mature, needing our services more.”

He illustrates this with a simple example: “In the past, foreign investors ordered due diligence audits of the company they were buying, but Estonians made deals on the basis of what was agreed in the sauna,” he smiles. “But there were times when people came to bitterly regret not checking out the goods before buying them. That isn’t done any more and banks have started to require due diligence for smaller transactions as well, which wasn’t considered necessary a few years ago.” Such is the changing job of financial advisors.