Tavistock Investments has paused its acquisition pipeline and furloughed 23 per cent of its workforce amid the market chaos caused by the coronavirus lockdown.
Brian Raven, chief executive at the listed adviser, told FTAdviser Tavistock's acquisition trail was currently on pause as it focused on other areas of the business during the pandemic, but the funds raised to purchase advice companies had been ring fenced for that purpose.
Last month the company sold a minority stake to a London and Hong Kong-based asset manager as part of a fundraiser for acquisitions, raising £650,000 of equity capital.
Mr Raven said the company also had potential to reduce its working week as it moved to cut costs and navigate the spreading pandemic and economic fallout.
Mr Raven said: "We are progressing discussions on a number of strategic partnerships and we always have an eye on a number of businesses but circumstances dictate that you don't always get them over the line.
"We are not an acquisition hungry group, we are more interested in partnerships which will generate additional assets for the investment management business and in particular, at the moment, the protected funds."
It comes as Tavistock announced in an update to the market this morning (April 8) that all members of its executive team had volunteered to waive a "significant proportion" of their income with immediate effect.
The advice firm is also not paying a dividend to its shareholders and support staff make up the 23 per cent of its workforce which has been placed on furlough for the duration of the nationwide lockdown.
Mr Raven said employees outside of the executive committee had voluntarily taken a pay cut as the business moved to avoid redundancies.
He added: "I'm expecting a significant number of other staff to waive salary certainly for the April, May and June period and really the reasons why we are doing it this way is to make sure the business is in the best possible shape when we come out the other end.
"We are trying extremely hard to avoid the need for any redundancies, it's a case of we are a team and if we pull together we will get through this through a combination of furlough, salary reductions and then potentially - depending on how long the lockdown period ends up being - reducing the working week in some areas.
"We are trying everything we can short of making people redundant, and I don't anticipate having to make redundancies."
rachel.mortimer@ft.com
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