Quilter to consider special dividend to shareholders
UK WEALTH management firm Quilter plc – formerly Old Mutual Wealth Management Limited – would consider a special dividend after the completion of the sale of its single-strategy asset management business, chief executive Paul Feeney said yesterday.
Quilter last week said it had received regulatory approval for the sale of its single-strategy asset management business.
It said it would consider the distribution to shareholders from the deal’s surplus proceeds after taking into account, among other things, the repayment of a £300 (R5 380) senior unsecured term loan.
Quilter will list on the JSE and the London Stock Exchange on Monday. This is part of the “managed” separation of the Old Mutual Group.
The unbundling is meant to unlock and create value for shareholders through the separation of its four businesses, Old Mutual Emerging Markets, Nedbank, Quilter, and Old Mutual Asset Management, into stand-alone entities.
Old Mutual plc shareholders last month approved the plan to sell 9.6 percent of Quilter in line with the planned break-up. In terms of the plan, for every three shares held in Old Mutual plc, shareholders would receive one share in Quilter.
Existing Old Mutual shareholders would receive 86.6 percent of Quilter, while the 9.6 percent would be placed with institutional investors.
Speaking to journalists in Johannesburg yesterday, Feeney said the special dividend was still subject to the board’s approval.
He was confident that South African investors would see value in Quilter. “South African investors know our company. They have been with us through the journey,” he said.
He said the company’s leadership had completed investor roadshows in the past 10 days, meeting existing and new investors. “We have done the Middle East, the east coast of the US, Germany, London and South Africa,” said Feeney.
Quilter had about £111 billion under management. At £3.5 trillion, the UK is one of the world’s largest wealth management markets.
Quilter corporate finance director Mark Satchel yesterday said the company had changed “tremendously” since is establishment in 2012. “At the time, the investment solutions part of the business was pretty nascent. And we had a whole heap of businesses in continental Europe.
“A lot of those businesses wrote old style, pension-type products (and) commission-led products. We closed some of them. We got out of nine markets in continental Europe over the past few years. That is in Germany, Poland, Italy, Switzerland, France and so on,” said Satchel.
At the same time, Quilter increased its distribution capability in the UK. In 2014, the company acquired financial advisory network Intrinsic, which gave it a much-needed direct distribution footprint in the UK.
Feeney said Quilter was in the process of re-branding all of its operating units. For instance, Intrinsic would change to Quilter Financial Planning, Old Mutual Wealth Private Client Advisors would become Quilter Private Clients and Old Mutual Investors would become Quilter Investors.