Mills & Reeve advises on £5m acquisition

THE Birmingham office of national law firm Mills & Reeve has advised Helvetia Wealth on the acquisition of Dunedin Independent plc, Scotland’s largest independently owned firm of independent financial advisers (IFA), for £5m.
 
Helvetia Wealth is a leading asset management business headquartered in Zurich, with offices in Liechtenstein, Geneva, London, Hamburg, Mauritius, Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow. It has an asset base of approximately £1bn.
 
Dunedin Independent is ranked in the top 100 wealth management companies in the UK, specialising in providing bespoke investment management solutions to high net worth individuals. Funds under management exceed £350m.
 
The strategic acquisition will strengthen Helvetia’s position in the UK.  
 
Guy van der Walt, vice CEO of Helvetia Wealth, said: “The UK is earmarked as one of the group’s key markets. We are now able to boast more than 80 employees from our UK offices alone and anticipate that our proposition of international fund management centred in Switzerland with access to Swiss wealth management services will prove attractive to high net worth individuals.”
 
Ben Turner, corporate finance associate at Mills & Reeve in Birmingham, led the team advising Helvetia Wealth. Other advisers from Mills & Reeve included Julian Smith and Nick Hughes (corporate), Ian Benson (financial regulation and risk), Christopher Townsend and Matthew Short (tax) and Rob Butler (pensions).
 
Mr Turner said: “The Dunedin transaction constitutes our third acquisition in nine months for Helvetia and reflects both their appetite and capacity to acquire good businesses notwithstanding the adverse economic climate. The team at Helvetia are a young and vibrant new player in the wealth management services sector whose ambitions match our own.”
 
HBJ Gateley Wareing acted on behalf of the shareholders of Dunedin Independent.