Caerus Capital group has instigated formal meetings concerning the possible sale of the firm to group Old Mutual Wealth.
This isn’t the first time Caerus have considered selling their business. Caerus was looking to sell a stake of their business to Skandia in 2012, which was a subsidiary of Old Mutual Wealth at the time.
This deal didn’t go through and in 2014, Old Mutual Wealth bought IFA Intrinsic for £98 million, which has had a capital injection of £25 million this passing October from Old Mutual.
The mortgage and general advisory firm have seen may propositions for their business, whilst the Chief Executive, Keith Carby, has maintained that they had never approached another firm offering sale but had “received numerous offers”. He commented, “I have never approached anyone to buy Caerus. We have had numerous offers over the last few years, yet none has been right for us.”
The Chief Executive went further to say, “We have no need to sell the business and would only do so in circumstances which suited all our stakeholders in general and our clients in particular.”
Only two offers had reached advanced negotiations, including the dismissed negotiations with Skandia in 2012 and more recently Sanlam in 2015.
Bristol-based advisory firm Sanlam were due to purchase a 19.9% share in Caerus but pulled out of the deal earlier this year In March, possibly lead by Sanlam’s new Chief Executive, Jonathan Polin who joined Sanlam in October last year.
