National advisory firm and consolidator Perspective Financial Group has issued a strong response to rumours that its backers are seeking a sale of the business due to the incoming Retail Distribution Review, labelling an article that appeared over the weekend “misleading”.
However, while the firm has hit out at the reports, a spokesperson stopped short of a denial that business advisory firm KPMG is running an auction to sell the business, as reported in both The Sunday Times and the Manchester Evening News.
Reports in both papers claim the company has hired KPMG to run an auction for which the first round of bidding closed on Friday (19 October). The papers claim the sale is expected to return between £60m and £80m.
Although the report in The Sunday Times report points out that the sale comes in advance of the Retail Distribution Review, a spokesman for the company said the article is “misleading” and that Perspective is in fact fully RDR-compliant.
The spokesman said: “I can confirm that KPMG are Perspective’s long-standing business consultants and that the backers of Perspective are always looking at options for future growth. Other than that, they have no additional comment to make.”
At the firm’s recent annual conference, Perspective group operations director Peter Craddock (pictured) confirmed the group’s plans to open up to non-independent advisers after the RDR. Currently they acquire only IFAs.
In its most recent results, Perspective reported that the cost of acquisitions and amortisation pushed it into a loss of almost £2m for 2011.
