The count of mergers and acquisition in wealth management hit 124 in 2015, a surge of nearly 49% compared to 83 a year ago, according to Scorpio Partnership’s latest M&A assessment report.
However, only $408.5bn worth of assets changed hands in 2015, compared with $461.4bn the year ago.
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Scorpio Partnership managing partner Sebastian Dovey said: "Looking closer at the deals concluded it is clear that a much higher number of deals took place among the much smaller wealth managers. Notably, the volume of AUM changing hands is substantively down from 2013 when $780bn was traded."
The pursuit of quality may have also had an impact on the pricing agreed among deal makers, ttteh authors of the report opined.
During the year, deal valuations increased marginally from 2.06% to 2.14% of price to AUM. Businesses with AUM between $5bn-$10bn commanded the best multiples relative to the market, the report says.
The deals involving Swiss wealth management businesses were the largest on average, with the average AUM per acquired firm at $9.4bn.
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By GlobalData"2015 may eventually be labelled as the year the Swiss regained confidence with a select group of wealth managers choosing this year to support growth through the corporate cheque book," Dovey commented.
