WH Ireland, the wealth management group, is in talks about an all-share merger with Team, another London-listed operator in the sector.<\/p>\n
Sky News has learnt that the two companies are in advanced discussions about a deal that could value WH Ireland at more than 4p-per-share – roughly eight times the value of a rival transaction which was voted down by its shareholders last month.<\/p>\n
Sources said the deal, if completed, would create a larger player in the UK wealth management market, although the companies are relative minnows with a combined market capitalisation of just \u00a320m.<\/p>\n
Both WH Ireland and Team declined to comment.<\/p>\n
The value that the prospective deal places on WH Ireland’s stock may prompt questions from its shareholders about why a transaction worth a fraction of its value received a recommendation from its board and advisers.<\/p>\n
Last month, Sky News revealed that the \u00a31m sale of WH Ireland’s wealth management division to Oberon Investments was on the brink of collapse after a group of investors moved to block it.<\/p>\n
WH Ireland’s wealth arm has about \u00a3830m of assets under management, while Team has total assets under management or administration of more than \u00a31bn.<\/p>\n
The former’s biggest shareholders, according to its website, include TFG Asset Management, which owns 29.9%, the prominent City figure Hugh Osmond, who holds just under 10%, and Melvin Lawson, owner of a 9.7% stake.<\/p>\n
The board of WH Ireland is chaired by Simon Moore, who also chairs LV Financial Services, the life insurance mutual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WH Ireland, the wealth management group, is in talks about an all-share merger with Team, another London-listed operator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[64,63,99,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-283338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-personal-finance","13":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}