Count to acquire Aviva’s stake in Centrepoint

Count Financial is acquiring a strategic 8.25 per cent stake in Professional Investment Services (PIS) parent entity Centrepoint Alliance, according to a Christmas Eve announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

Count will be acquiring the stake from Aviva Overseas Holdings, paying $1.30 per share for its non-escrowed shareholding. The sale includes 7,731,685 shares for a total transaction value of just over $10 million.

In the statement to the ASX, Count described the acquisition as “a strategic investment, helping to give it greater optionality in the financial advice space as consolidation in the non-aligned part of the industry gathers momentum, in part due to regulatory change.”

Count chairman Barry Lambert told Money Management that with Count in a good financial position following the float of Countplus it had been a good time to have a look at opportunities when the stake in Centrepoint became available.

Count was a good fit with PIS and could potentially offer the firm some assistance in an operational sense, through strengths that PIS may not have had in the past but could take advantage of in the future, Lambert said.

The fact that PIS had recently entered into an enforceable undertaking (EU) with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) had not factored into the arrangement, despite the fact that the EU was announced shortly before the acquisition agreement, Lambert said.

It had been known in the market for some time that PIS had been having issues with ASIC for some time and the announcement of the EU was merely a formality, he said.