Genius Wealth Management, an IFA based in Cheshire, has been purchased by MKC Wealth.
MKC Wealth is backed by private equity firm Cabot Square Capital, and was founded by Nigel Speirs and Dominic Rose – both previous principals at Quilter.
The deal will add £150m in assets under management to MKC, along with an additional 300 clients on their books. Toni Haynes, the CEO at Genius, will be joining MKC as a principal, with six support staff and two chartered advisers.
Meanwhile, the managing director of Genius, Iain Crawford, will be retiring, but taking a non-executive role at MKC to oversee the handover. MKC Wealth chief executive Dominic Rose commented on the handover: “Iain will play a significant role in the transition of clients to MKC Wealth. We are ahead of our initial plans and now have over £1bn in assets under advice.
“More importantly all our staff, including the Genius team, are rewarded directly based on feedback from our clients and have also become shareholders in the business we are building together.”
Mr Crawford commented on the deal and his retirement: “At the start of the year, I began talking about my succession planning with Toni Haynes and we obtained a valuation from a firm which specialises in financial services businesses. From that initial conversation it quickly became apparent that our best option was to join forces with a larger firm with greater resources but one that still prides itself on a personal service.
“After an extensive search, I am delighted that we have found the right partner in MKC Wealth, the only firm we met that shared our ethos, professionalism, approachability and honesty that our clients need and deserve.”
Mr Rose said: “In keeping with our strategy of building a quality wealth management business we are completing selective acquisitions particularly where it is clear that we can be ‘the safe pair of hands’ that retiring principals want to look after clients.
“There is such a strong cultural alignment between the Genius and MKC teams. I am delighted that the whole team has joined us meaning we have been able to facilitate the retirement of the business owner whilst giving the rest of the team the opportunity to thrive with us for the long term.”
Cabot Square Capital investment director Freddie Athill said: “We are very impressed with the way Dom and his colleagues have developed and grown MKC Wealth. They have a very clear strategy of acquiring and integrating the established businesses of retiring advisers.
“The acquisition of Genius is exactly the type of deal we are backing MKC Wealth to make. We believe in total and long term commitment to clients, advisers and staff.”
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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.