In terms of the acquisitions that come next, Fleming says AssetCo is open to acquiring wealth managers as well as asset managers.
River and Mercantile
AssetCo has a stake in fund house River and Mercantile of just over 5 per cent, with Fleming saying the motivation for the deal was partly to “help the company change and improve”.
Gilbert is deputy chairman of the company, while Alex Hoctor-Duncan, global head of Aberdeen Standard Investments, is soon to join the board as an executive director with responsibility for business strategy. The company issued a trading update in May 2021, saying it managed around £44bn of assets.
In the most recent set of full year accounts, filed at Companies House and covering the year to March 2020, the company recorded a profit of £12.6m, down a little from £13m in the previous year. The bulk of fee revenue came from the institutional book of business.
Parmenion
The third business in which the company is invested, and the largest financial commitment made so far, is Parmenion, a platform that was sold by Aberdeen Standard to private equity company Preservation Capital Partners, but the private equity house promptly sold 30 per per cent to AssetCo for an initial payment of just over £20m.
Ben Hammond, platforms director at consultancy Altus, says: “Parmenion is a bit differentiated from others in the market because it very much specialises in the investment management piece. There are portfolios an adviser can use, and can white label if that’s what they want.”
Mike Barrett, consulting director at the Lang Cat, says Aberdeen Standard never published separate accounts for Parmenion, but he says the typical destroyers of profit for platform businesses is usually technology problems and these have been absent from Parmenion.
He adds that Parmenion has consistently come near the top of satisfaction ratings with advisers, which he feels means the business will not have lost many customers to rivals in recent years.
Of the Parmenion stake purchase, Fleming says: “The appeal of Parmenion is that it has great technology, and an already existing great management team, and we think it is possible to grow a platform and to win clients from other platforms.”
David Thorpe is special projects editor of FTAdviser
