Industry News June 2022

Fairstone M&A partner Jack Cronin breaks down the latest key industry news

Industry news

As we enter the summer months, dealmaking activity would generally begin to slow down to avoid any extended breaks in discussions when people start to get away for holidays.

Based on our experience though, what we have seen in the press and from our professional sources, the interest levels from sellers looking to engage and transact has remained in line with that seen in the earlier months.

It’s impossible to say exactly what is driving the sellers

Private equity maintained its involvement in the sector with Nordic Capital announcing the acquisition of national advice firm Ascot Lloyd from Oaktree Capital Management. Foster Denovo also announced it had secured up to £100m of funding from US-based investment manager Crestline Investors. Private equity-backed Skerritts acquired Geoffrey Craig Limited and Saffron Wealth Management, adding a combined £150m in client assets.

Aside from private equity, we also saw Law firm Irwin Mitchell expanding its wealth management division with the acquisition of Cheshire-based TWP Wealth, adding £100m to its £1bn in assets under management.

Notable activity

Other notable activity came from Saltus Group who bought Bushey-based NSL Wealth, Perspective Financial announced the acquisition of Huntingdon-based Ramsey Financial and it was reported that NatWest Group is weighing an offer for Tilney Smith & Williamson, currently owned by Warburg Pincus and Permira.

Asset Management

In the asset management space, Franklin Templeton bought the London-based international credit specialist Alcentra Asset Management from BNY Mellon. FT Adviser also reported that Nucleus is in the process of selling its discretionary fund manager ‘Nucleus IMX’, which formally launched just a month before the advised platform was bought by James Hay with the help of private equity fund Epiris.