The aim was to create a small but full-service firm acting for owner-managed businesses across the North West.

While a full-service firm might face such conflicts, he said, "we're not subject to any of those backroom agendas and pressures."

But in 1993, to be more like a full-service firm, Olde started compensating brokers with handsome commissions.

Advisory boutiques often argue that such full-service firms are fraught with conflicts of interest.

Many, after all, thought that with the advent of online trading, full-service firms would become relics.

"I mean a new kind of full-service firm," he said.

But the full-service firms are trying to change that image.

But after months of plotting how to deal with the Internet challenge, full-service firms now have something new to sell.

"The full-service firms' costs are mostly in their sales and research people and their overhead."

"Yesterday, we still thought of Merrill Lynch as a full-service firm," he added.