Towry has been sold to Tilney Bestinvest for £600m, subject to regulatory approvals.
The sale will see Towry’s private equity backer Palamon Capital Partners net 13 times the capital it invested in the independent wealth manager, which has more than £9bn of client assets.
The deal came just two months after Tilney Bestinvest claimed rumours it was lining up a £700m deal for rival advice group Towry were “pure speculation”.
It was in December 2015 that Palamon Capital Partners announced it had decided to sell the advice business, then reportedly valued at £600m, after giving up on plans to float it on the stock market.
Towry employs more than 900 staff across 21 regional offices.
Palamon first bought John Scott & Partners, a small founder-led wealth manager with £250m assets under management in 2003. It then carried out a buy-and-build strategy to roll out the John Scott model, which included the reverse take-over of Towry Law in 2006 and the acquisition of the UK subsidiary of Edward Jones in 2009, among others.
Towry went on to complete a further six acquisitions, including a deal for Ashcourt Rowan in 2015.
Daan Knottenbelt, partner at Palamon, said: “It has been a tremendous experience to have executed a transformational growth strategy that saw Towry develop from a single office in Marlow with £5m of revenue to become a leading national wealth manager with £120m of revenue and more than £9bn of client assets.”
It has been a tremendous experience to have executed a transformational growth strategy that saw Towry develop from a single office in Marlow with £5m of revenue to become a leading national wealth manager. Daan KnottenbeltRob Devey, chief executive at Towry, said the sale was the culmination of hard work over the last two years to make the firm “one of the national leaders in the UK wealth management sector”.
“Moving forwards the combined business will be able to offer an even wider range of services for clients and career opportunities for employees in all parts of the UK,” he added.
Tilney Bestinvest’s chief executive Peter Hall called it a “transformational deal” that will position the combined group as one of the leading UK wealth management firms, providing both financial planning and investment management services.
“The combination of Towry and Tilney Bestinvest is compelling because both firms share a culture of aiming to provide the very highest levels of professional and personal client service.”
emma.hughes@ft.com
