The beauty of boutiques

Interest in boutiques has escalated recently, but will it be sustained after the dust of the financial crisis has settled?

As the saying goes, 'good things come in small packages'. Is this true of the wealth management industry, or is it more a case of 'big is beautiful'? Right up until this time last year, favour was firmly with the industry heavyweights. When asked what the future for the wealth management industry looked like, the stock response from many experts was 'consolidation'. Over the previous decade, there had been a proliferation of boutiques and start-ups, and many commentators' views were that these firms would simply be swallowed up by their larger peers where their economies of scale could leve...