Britain's Brewin Dolphin has agreed to buy Investec's Irish wealth business for 44 million euros in cash in a deal it said on Friday would make it one of the country's top-three wealth managers.
Investec said in a statement that it had decided to sell because of changes to its business model as a result of Britain's planned exit from the European Union, and that its other Irish businesses were unaffected by the sale.
Brewin, in a separate statement, said it would look to raise 60 million pounds in a share placing to help fund the deal and bolster its capital position after a string of other acquisitions over the last 12 months.
The shares will be placed with institutional investors at a price of 305 pence per share, it said, adding the placing was not conditional on the Investec deal completing as planned in the second half of 2019.
The placing price represents a discount of 5% to the closing price of 321 pence on May 9.
Shares in Brewin were down 2.8% at 0704 GMT at 312 pence, among the biggest fallers on the FTSE mid-cap index.
Brewin also said its first-half managed funds had dipped to 42.4 billion pounds, compared with 42.8 billion pounds at the end of 2018, as market losses offset net inflows of new cash.
Pretax profit during the six months to end-March fell 12.9% to 29.7 million pounds, while the interim dividend was flat at 4.4 pence per share. (Reuters)
Source: www.businessworld.ie
