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For anyone watching the S&G story from when they became the world's first "listed law firm", the writing has been on the wall from the very beginning. Even prior to listing, S&G were taking over Australian PI firms at a rate of knots. The only other company with a similar corporate model was ABC Childcare which grew to be Australia's largest in the previous decade but collapsed when the 2008 downturn hit and credit dried up, preventing further acquisitions. These had created the appearance of fantastic growth when the opposite was the case. For S&G, Quindell was one acquisition too many. Aside from that, the listed law firm model is flawed as is evident from the similar downturn experienced by S&G's other PI competitor, Shine which also had plans to enter the UK market.