Fordham Group joins Perpetual
Perpetual Limited announced on Tuesday 15 December 2009 the further expansion of its Private Wealth capabilities following the acquisition of Fordham Group.
As at 30 November 2009, Fordham had around $500 million of funds under management and advice.
Perpetual Chief Executive, David Deverall, said the Fordham acquisition was highly complementary to the company’s Private Wealth strategy and service offering and filled a capability gap in its offering to the high net worth advice market as well as strengthening their presence and commitment in Victoria.
“Fordham represents an attractive opportunity to extend Perpetual’s services to private business owners. This enhances our ability to better service an important market segment for the company and helps us reach our goal of becoming the leading advisor to financially successful Australians and their families,” Mr Deverall said.
“Our current services are focused on high net worth individuals and their families; the acquisition of Fordham brings us new expertise in strategic financial advice, accounting and tax services for private business owners.”
Mr Deverall said Fordham built strongly on Perpetual’s acquisitions of Grosvenor Financial Services and Financial Pursuit earlier this year.
“Perpetual’s national market presence also provides a platform to expand our service offering to private business owners nationally,” Mr Deverall said.
Mark Cummings, Fordham’s Chairman of Directors said Perpetual Private Wealth and Fordham enjoyed a strong alignment of values and cultures focussed on client service, wealth building and wealth protection.
“Fordham helps private business owners and their families to understand and manage their businesses and build and protect their wealth. Joining forces with Perpetual represents an exciting opportunity to bring our highly complementary businesses together and provide an expanded offering to clients across a national platform,” Mr Cummings said.
Fordham’s total revenue for the 12 months ended 30 June 2009 was $22 million comprising 75% accounting, taxation and strategy and planning revenues and around 25% wealth management fees.
Mr Deverall said Perpetual was evaluating other opportunities consistent with its strategy of acquiring high quality advisor practices with complementary capabilities servicing niche market segments that can benefit from Perpetual’s breadth and depth of services.
The transaction is expected to be completed in January 2010, at which time Mr Cummings will lead the combined businesses of Perpetual Private Clients and Fordham in Victoria. Mr Lee Wapling will continue to head Perpetual’s Private Clients business in Victoria.
Fordham is Perpetual’s third acquisition by Perpetual in the private wealth segment in calendar 2009. Collectively, these three acquisitions increase Perpetual Private Wealth’s funds under advice by around $1.1 billion.
In March 2009 Perpetual acquired Financial Pursuit, and in September 2009 acquired Grosvenor Financial Services.
As at 30 November 2009, funds under advice were approximately $8.0 billion. The addition of Fordham will increase funds under advice to around $8.5 billion. Funds under advice as at 30 June 2009 were $6.8 billion.