Brewin Dolphin - one of the UK's largest wealth managers with Scottish offices in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow - has agreed to a £1.6 billion all-cash takeover offer from Royal Bank of Canada (RBC).
RBC will pay 515p per share, a 62 per cent premium to tghe 260-year-old company's previous closing share price. Together with RBC's existing UK wealth business, the enlarged operation will have about £64bn under management, making it the third-largest manager in the UK and Ireland.
Doug Guzman, head of RBC Wealth Management, said the UK is a key growth market for the Canadian group. He added that he is "confident" the acquisition will deliver benefits to clients, employees and stakeholders.
“By combining two highly complementary businesses, we will increase the depth and breadth of our services and position the combined business as a premier integrated wealth management provider to private and institutional clients," Mr Guzman said.
READ MORE: Brewin Dolphin looks to increase growth with £40m placing
“Both management teams are excited by a shared vision of high quality client service, client-centric culture and the exceptional growth opportunities that we can deliver together. We look to continue investing in the combined business and take it to greater heights."
Robin Beer, chief executive of Brewin Dolphin, added:“Building on the strong organic growth that we have achieved to date, the combined businesses will create an attractive platform for future growth.
“As part of RBC we would be able to provide our clients with a broader range of products and services, and expand our distribution channels through leveraging RBC’s global presence."
Brewin Dolphin has a network of more than 30 offices, with £59bn of assets under management as of December 31.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here