Brewin Dolphin Holdings Plc (LSE:BRW)’s employees are set to bank a £66mln windfall after the wealth manager agreed to be taken over by Royal Bank of Canada (TSX:RY) (RBC).
The company’s 2,000 employees own a combined total of 4.13% shares via an employee ownership trust, meaning each employee is set to bank an average of around £33,000 once the acquisition is finalised.
Based on November’s annual report, chief executive Robin Beer, finance director Siobhan Boylan and executive director Charlie Ferry owned just over 1mln shares, worth £6mln between them.
The offer, at 515p per share, values the company at £1.6bn and represents a premium of 62% on the wealth management’s closing share price on 30 March.
For RBC the purchase signals a strategic decision to add a “market leader” in the UK wealth management industry to its RBC Wealth Management arm, with Brewin Dolphin overseeing £55bn in assets under management (AuM).
Merging the businesses should see RBC Wealth Management’s AUM expand to £64bn, with a combined revenue for 2021 of £545mln.
“This is a transformative acquisition for RBC Wealth Management and cements RBC’s position as a market leader across multiple business platforms in the UK, the Channel Islands and Europe,” said David Thomas, chief executive of RBC Capital Markets Europe.
This deal also now allows RBC to boast a business with origins tracing as far back as 1762.
Brewin was later acquired by Skandinaviska Banken in 1987, with a management buy-out five years later, followed in 1994 by a listing on the London Stock Exchange.
The firm completed several takeovers of its own in the 18 years that followed, including Duncan Lawrie Asset Management in 2016 and Ireland-focused based Investec Wealth Management 2019.