According to this weekend’s Sunday Times, groups including Rathbones, Towry and Quilter are keen on a £50mn acquisition of the arm, which has been running since 1985 and has some £2.2bn in assets under management.
The paper also reported that specialist investment bank Evercore has been hired by Jupiter to oversee a possible sale of the business. Broker Numis estimates Jupter’s private client division is worth between £27mn and £34mn, excluding balance sheet capital, and said the group could use the proceeds to pay a special dividend.
However, Numis also highlighted the fact that around a third of the private client arm’s assets are invested in Jupiter’s own unit trust range.
“The terms of any deal will need to make it clear as to the likelihood of Jupiter therefore maintaining some of the funds under management (FUM), and thus some revenue, within the other parts of the group (i.e. mutual funds and investment trusts) and any potential unwind period of this,” said the broker.
Numis’s view is that a sale at the price mentioned would make sense for Jupiter. The news comes as Maarten SlendeBroek, who joined the group in September 2012, prepares to replace Edward Bonham Carter as chief executive of Jupiter in March.
