In March APC celebrated 30 years of holding our own Australian Financial Services License or AFSL.  This was quite a significant milestone as very few advisory firms would have remained privately owned and self-licensed for that length of time.  Most would have been acquired by larger firms as for many getting bigger is synonymous with being better.  However this is rarely true from the client’s perspective and is not aligned with APC’s ‘Client First’ approach.

This anniversary provides testament to APC’s enduring philosophy of being boutique and developing personal relationships both with our clients as well as our team.  By providing valued advice to our clients and professional opportunities for our team, APC strives to have long term relationships with both.  It is aligned with our goal to ensure that over time, as APC’s shareholding may change, APC as a privately owned, self-licensed advisory firm, will remain.

What did we do?
To mark the occasion APC took our team to Adelaide on Friday March 29 to enjoy a private wine tour of some wineries in the Barossa Valley.

Whilst Penfolds is of course perhaps the most well-known winery, we were impressed by the first winery we went to which was Seppeltsfield. Started by Joseph and Johanna Seppelt just 15 years after European settlement in South Australia, Seppeltsfield has the longest unbroken lineage of Tawny (from 1878 to present day) in the world.

It was not lost on us, given why we were in Adelaide and what we were celebrating, the significance of such a collection and the singular purpose and vision of the Seppelt family to create such a legacy.  Further, after a ‘relatively’ brief experience of being owned by a corporation (1985-2007), it returned to being privately owned which it remains to this day, under the stewardship of Warren Randall who worked for B Seppelt & Sons in the 1980s.  Warren believes that under private ownership, the estate can best endure as the custodian of the Seppelt family legacy.  For APC, its owners and team, this resonated quite profoundly.

After an enjoyable day in the Barossa, we returned to the Intercontinental Hotel for an hour or two of rest before reconvening for a team dinner in the hotel’s Shiki Japanese restaurant.  It was a lively and thoroughly enjoyable evening where we shared many APC stories and toasted the founder of APC, Michael Tratt and our inaugural Practice Manager, Marie Tratt.

That night partners arrived from Melbourne and the remainder of the weekend was our team’s to enjoy.  However it was lovely to see many catch up over the weekend with some visiting the Haigh’s chocolate factory, while others the Japanese gardens.  A few played golf at Royal Adelaide and Kooyonga.  Others went back for a second look at the Barossa!

Thank you!

Of course, we are able to celebrate 30 years of APC because of our enduring relationships with our clients.  We regard the opportunity to be of service as a privilege and one that all members of APC, both past and present, genuinely value and enjoy.

Here’s to the next 30 years!

All our best,

The APC Team.