August 2018 Review

Following suit with the previous months of 2018, August has flown by but not without some M&A news to keep us all on our toes with how active the market has been to date.

AFH continue their trend of acquiring businesses and this month saw them complete on their 10th and 11th acquisitions of this financial year. Their 10th was Sussex based Harvey Curtis LLP, and 11th being HTH (Group) Limited. HTH is the second business they have acquired in Yorkshire this year and sees them grow by a further 26 advisors.

Mattioli Woods acquired Broughtons Financial Planning who are based in the West Midlands in a £4 million deal. Mattioli suggested that they would be making further acquisitions later on in the year, this was after reporting a strong trading start to the year by increasing assets by 10% to £8.7 billion despite their exit from defined benefit pension transfer advice. 

Rathbones completed the acquisition of Speirs and Jeffery which helps their financial planning arm grow by a further 8500 clients. It has been reported that Rathbones paid £104 million for the investment management firm based in Glasgow.

Beaufort Financial announced two Midlands based acquisitions, one in Nottinghamshire and another in Worcestershire. Beaufort Financial now has 25 member firms within the partnership and it has been conveyed that they plan to add another three or four before the end of the year…watch this space!

All in all, M&A activity has continued to disturb what is usually a quiet month in our space, the market seems as buoyant as ever whether this is owing to regulatory changes, or simply less people going away, the trend of a hectic year seems to be persistent.