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St James’s Place (SJP) is planning to raise up to £1billion to buy the business of retiring partners.
The FTSE 100 wealth management company comprises 2,600 partner firms staffed by 4,800 self-employed financial advisers who trade under the SJP banner.
When advisers retire, their books are sold to remaining partners using bank loans that are guaranteed by SJP.
The practice allows the wealth manager to retain clients when financial advisers leave. But rising interest rates mean it is becoming more expensive to fund the buyouts.
The £1billion raise will help to fund equity investment in partner businesses.
Hard sell: One former St James’s Place advisor said that he had been trying to offload his book of clients for 18 months
St James’s Place chief operating officer Iain Rayner said: ‘We have been thinking about how we increasingly employ equity alongside debt to help with succession planning.
‘Providing continuity of client servicing if and when advisers retire and being able to occasionally move client relationships around the partnership is really important to us.’
The London-based firm, which manages around £157billion of client money, sets the interest rate for the loans at 3.5 percentage points above the base rate.
This has been at or below 0.5 per cent for more than a decade, meaning partners were paying up to 4 per cent in borrowing costs.
But the base rate has soared to a 15-year high of 5.25 per cent, taking loan repayments to 8.75 per cent, which has deterred buyers.
One former St James’s Place advisor said that he had been trying to offload his book of clients for 18 months.
‘There are no buyers whatsoever inside St James’s Place,’ he told the Financial Times.
‘The tracker rate of interest has just killed anyone’s desire to buy any clients.’
However, Rayner disputed this saying 2023 was going to be ‘one of our largest-ever years for partner loans’.
The firm did not respond to a request for further comment.
It has been a difficult year for St James’s Place, which has seen its share price tumble 40 per cent since January. The price is 60 per cent below the peak reached in December 2021.
Following a boom period during the Covid-19 pandemic, St James’s Place and the wider sector have been hit by tougher economic conditions.
Nervous, cash-strapped investors have been heading for the exit and volatile markets have dented returns.
Meanwhile, in October it was forced to overhaul how much it charges customers after years of accusations that it was operating an unfair fee structure. It will scrap exit fees for new bond and pension investments for the ‘vast majority’ of accounts.
The move is set to cost the firm around £150m when the shake up comes into effect in 2025.