Investor Group tackles Sydney market with latest acquisition
Investor Group will forge ahead with plans to make Prescott a nationally recognised financial planning brand and penetrate the financial planning market in all Australian states after announcing the acquisition of Williams Hatchman and Kean (WHK) this week.
Under the terms of the deal WHK will use its financial planning business, WHK Financial Planning, to launch Investor Group’s Prescott brand in Sydney. Prescott is currently only marketed in Adelaide and Melbourne.
The merger takes total funds under management at Investor Group, which is ASX-listed, to approximately $3.9 billion, with annual fee and commission income rising to more than $120 million.
WHK operates a brandedBTwrap service that will manage around $527 million once existing funds under management at Investor Group are added to the service.
The acquisition - worth $9.55 million in cash and stock - meets two of Investor Group’s three previously stated strategies to develop a national business brand for accounting and taxation services, make Prescott a nationally recognised brand, and develop individual regional member firms.
“We will also keep focused on the third pillar of growth strategy - the further strengthening of our well-established network of regional member firms in four Australian States and New Zealand,” Investor Group managing director Kevin White says.
The deal will also have a significant impact on growth at WHK, a second-tier accounting firm offering a range of advisory and financial planning services. “We have a great opportunity to build on our base of more than 300 financial planning clients and funds under advice of approximately $210 million,” WHK chief executive Michael Manak says.
The deal marks the fourth financial planning acquisition for Investor Group, which earlier this year added Sanderson Blair and Accumulus to its Prescott business, which it purchased in September last year. All three are based in Adelaide.
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