Several senior staff from wealth manager Ashcourt Rowan are set to step down should its acquisition by Towry complete as planned, while a post-buyout review will also see duplication office locations close and probable redundancies.
This morning (2 February) Towry announced that it had agreed in principle to buy Ashcourt Rowan for a consideration of £97m.
Ashcourt Rowan’s directors considered the terms of the transaction, which will see shareholders receive 270 pence in cash plus a principal amount of 5p in loan notes, to be “fair and reasonable”, and unanimously recommended that shareholders vote in favour.
John Porteous, head of client proposition at Towry, told FTAdviser that the deal will see Ashcourt Rowan’s chief executive Jonathan Polin, chairman Hugh Ward, finance chief Alfio Tagliabue and head of governance Steve Haines all leave the business upon completion.
Towry chief executive Rob Devey and chairman Ron Sandler are set to continue in their roles at the combined wealth management group, potentially worth around £11bn in assets under advice.
Mr Porteous said that during the next three months Towry would work to understand which parts of the business overlapped and which could be complementary to the enlarged company. This would most likely see offices close and probable redundancies.
“We will undertake a full review and have to accept that there will be duplicate locations between the two, as well as some realisable cost synergies.”
Ashcourt Rowan employs 340 members of staff in 16 offices across the UK, while Towry has around 800 people across 20 offices.
He did explain that the business would continue to be “planning-led”, with clients and advisers hopefully benefitting from the different skillsets of Ashcourt’s “talented investment team” that would result in Towry taking on different ways of managing money.
While Mr Porteous saw increased scale as an advantage, he noted that it was important to remove any unnecessary bureaucracy along the way and hoped for the best with the integration of the two firms’ back office and IT systems.
“Nothing ever moves in a straight line, but I see no reason why the integration won’t work.”
peter.walker@ft.com
