He also bought into the newly listed Fiducian in Australia, with a vision to expand by taking advantage of what he thought would be a consolidating part of financial services. But while his 10 per cent got him a seat on the board, it did not give him control compared with the interests of Indy Singh, the high-profile founder and chief executive. Kerr wanted to merge Fiducian with the then-Tasmanian SMF group, but Singh did not. After an increasingly acrimonious relationship, Kerr sold out – for about three times his entry price. As it turned out, Kerr’s vision was correct. SMF subsequently went on a roller-coaster ride of mergers, which resulted in being acquired by IOOF Holdings. A former business development manager with SMF, Chris Kellaher, is now managing director. Fiducian shares are languishing at a third of their peak. Kerr thinks of the exercise as a failure, even though he did well financially out of it. He believes he failed to correctly assess Singh and his aspirations.

The van Eyk experience, he says, is very different – maybe because he learnt his lesson. “I have been talking with Mark on and off now for about 10 years, after van Eyk almost did that deal with Mercer,” he says. That deal, whereby Mercer Investment Consulting almost bought van Eyk, was well-publicised, was supposedly worth about $16 million. Mark Thomas, so the story goes, pulled out at the last moment because he couldn’t see himself going into the Mercer office each day. But in order to allow Stephen van Eyk some liquidity for his shares, Thomas raised a small amount of money from some new minority shareholders, making the unlisted public company a bit unwieldy with about 40 shareholder entities.

Thomas says the new structure, of a private company with a dozen shareholders, is more flexible, enabling decisions to be made and implemented more quickly. He believes that each of the company’s three main business lines will benefit from having Torchlight as a cornerstone investor – subscription research, dealer group advice and support, and funds management. Kerr and Thomas believe that the new landscape for financial planners means they will be looking for a closer alignment with groups such as van Eyk. “It’s almost as if we’re going back to the old tied-agents system,” Thomas says of the impact of the move to fee-for-service advice. Kerr says: “The key is to provide quality research and solutions, but we also want to be able to ensure that, where there’s a change of ownership at a practice for instance, that we can take stakes in them. We want to play a larger role in the industry… van Eyk has enormous market presence.