Amber River, the national build-and-buy financial planner, previously known as Socium Group, is on target to reach £10bn assets under management by the end of the year.
Since it was founded in 2019, Amber River has made 36 acquisitions, seeing its assets under management skyrocket to their current level of £8.8bn. The firm’s rapid growth in the past few years comes in the wake of private equity backing from Penta, as well as funding to the tune of £200m from Ares Management.
Amber River is headed up by Mary-Anne McIntyre, the former CEO of Openwork. Ms McIntyre said: “Sitting here today we are £8.8bn and we’ve got a couple of acquisitions in the pipeline that will take us to that. But we need the market to improve. It was meant to be September if I am honest but because of market movements, it’s sort of gone against us. “The exceptional progress we have made to date is testament to the quality of the customer-focused advice businesses we have acquired, the calibre of the team we have put in place to help these businesses develop and grow, and the support and experience of the backers we have partnered with.”
Typically, Amber River acquires small to medium, high performing advice firms, with between three to ten advisers, around £2m EBITDA, and £200-500m in AUM. Despite the success in its growth, Amber River has reported a large loss of £24m. Ms McIntyre puts this loss down to equity interest from its acquisitions. She commented: “And we leave them with 20% ownership, so we get alignments and that’s the pieces entering in the account as a loss. It’s the valuation of that equity stake. So unfortunately, as we grow and become more successful that gets bigger. It’s currently at £24m.”
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Louise Jeffreys is managing director of Gunner & Co, an IFA broker with values based on strong relationships built on trust, credibility and value.
Gunner & Co. specialise in IFA sales, IFA business sales, retiring IFAs and IFA client bank sales.