Bonham Carter backed advice firm loses £6.4mn

According to Netwealth's latest accounts (published January 3), the loss figure was almost exactly £1mn higher than the prior year, despite raising millions of pounds from shareholders. 

Bonham Carter became chair of Netwealth - a business which offers investment management services to advisers and retail clients, and restricted financial advice to retail clients -  in April 2021.

He is also a substantial shareholder in the company.

Bonham Carter had previously sat on the board of the company for three years, and has said he is also a client. 

Netwealth - which was founded by former Goldman Sachs partner Charlotte Ransom - raised £6mn from new and existing shareholders in October 2022. 

Among the shareholders in the company are Harvey McGrath, former chair of Prudential, Bruce Carnegie Brown, former chair of Lloyds of London, and Gerard Lyons, former chief economist at Standard Chartered, who also acts as chief economic strategist at Netwealth.

Lord Spencer, who founded TP ICAP, is also a shareholder and has invested more than £10mn of his personal cash into Netwealth shares. 

The company had a turnover of £1.6mn for the period to end of March 2022, and expenses of £7.9mn. 

The company has accumulated losses of £29.7m since launching in 2015 and has raised about £43mn from shareholders in that time. 

In 2021, the average client portfolio size was £466,000, and the minimum investment level was £50,000. 

Ransom has previously indicated to FTAdviser that she hopes to acquire small advice firms in future. 

In her statement accompanying the accounts, Ransom said prevailing market conditions had impacted the company but that there has not been an exodus of clients, and that all of the portfolios run by the firm have outperformed the relevant benchmark since launch. 

The company expects to achieve assets under management of £5bn by 2025 and to be profitable “well before” then.

david.thorpe@ft.com