Clifton AM completes acquisition of Portsmouth adviser

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Clifton AM completes acquisition of Portsmouth adviser
Anthony Carty, group financial planning director at Clifton Asset Management

Clifton Asset Management has completed the purchase of Southsea-based advice firm Leonard Gold Financial Management, as it eyes an additional four acquisitions this year.

In an announcement today (August 16), the firm said it has been preparing for the deal for two years, which has seen clients transitioning to Clifton. 

Clients have also been introduced to their new adviser, who will be taking over from retiring principal Nas Khan. 

Clifton first announced the purchase of Leonard Gold Financial Management in September 2019 as part of its plans to build a regional network of small advice businesses.

Leonard Gold Financial Management, which was originally part of Leonard Gold Chartered Accountants, initially joined Clifton Wealth Partnership as an appointed representative with a pre-agreed purchase to take place in 2021.

Khan said: “It has been a pleasure working with Clifton over the past two years to ensure a seamless transition to their service, and I can now leave the business knowing that all of our clients are in very experienced hands.”

Clifton’s group financial planning director, Anthony Carty, added: “There have been many benefits of working with Leonard Gold as an AR firm, with clients not only becoming accustomed to our leading systems and processes, but it has also allowed us to work very closely with Nas on the transition of all clients to their new adviser.” 

Clifton Wealth Partnership, a subsidiary of Clifton Asset Management, was launched in June 2019 as a vehicle for smaller advisory firms to either become appointed representatives or join the firm via acquisition.

At the time Carty said the strategy was an effort to “disrupt the established advisory firm acquisition model” as it made the first of “six or seven” expected deals within the next two years, including Shrewsbury-based Plan For Life Wealth Management.

He also said the “grand vision” was to have £1bn of assets under management within the next five years.

Speaking to FTAdviser, Carty said Clifton currently has two other firms who are going through the due diligence process, one in Scotland and one in Wales.

He said: “We've got another six going through various stages in the process and we would anticipate to complete four by the end of the year, or early next year. That's the plan and if we assume that we complete four by the year's end, we would expect to complete another four or five during the course of 2022. 

“Our current AUM is £600m, these four that will go through will double that and take us to £1.3bn and then we'd expect at the end of next year to get to somewhere in the region of £2bn with those further acquisitions. It's a reasonably dramatic increase.”

sonia.rach@ft.com

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