British wealth manager Charles Stanley is set to raise £15.8m through an institutional share placing, reduce its dividend by 60% and continue its disposal of non-core assets, in a bid to cut costs and focus entirely on the wealth management business.
The changes come after Charles Stanley CEO Paul Abberley’s strategic review of the business, which started following his appointment in October 2014.
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"Having recently been appointed as CEO, I have seen first-hand the quality and breadth of our client offering, the expertise of our staff and the scale of our operations, all of which should enable us to take good advantage of the exciting growth opportunities that the wealth management industry provides.
"We have a strategy to modernise and significantly improve the operating performance of the Group and the Placing will help support the execution of such strategy," said Abberley.
The changes are also intended at improving the group’s solvency levels to 125% of the regulatory requirement and drive its operating margin up to 15% by 2018.
The group has also decided to sell the principal elements of Charles Stanley Securities, and Charles Stanley Financial Solutions, and is currently in talks for sale of these businesses.
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By GlobalDataAll these changes have been announced in a trading update, which revealed a 6% rise in total funds under management and administration at 31 March 2015 to £21.3bn, from £20.1bn a year ago.
Discretionary managed funds jumped by 13.4% to £9.3bn compared to £8.2bn the prior year.
Overall, unaudited Group revenues saw a rise of 0.4%.
