Grant Thornton sells Australian private wealth unit
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Advisory firm Grant Thornton has agreed a deal to hive off its Australian private wealth business to Oreana Group.
As first reported by Street Talk, Grant Thornton partners were told about the move on Tuesday, which would see the firmâs clients and the unitâs senior staff transfer to Oreana Group, while others were made redundant or shifted to other parts of the business.
Grant Thorntonâs senior team â Jon Black, Joanne Kenderes and Laura Perresini â would be the majority owner of Oreana Private,Â
The deal was designed to help Grant Thornton exit the private wealth sector in Australia. Its private wealth arm advised clients on wealth and asset management, superannuation and retirement planning, asset protection and the like.
Firm says the decision for the M&A deal ‘was not taken lightly’
Accountancy giant Grant Thornton has sold its private wealth business in Australia to its senior team members for an undisclosed sum.
The senior team, consisting of Jon Black, Joanne Kenderes and Laura Perresini are the majority owner of Oreana Private, part of Australian and Hong Kong-based firm Oreana Financial Group.
They will be joined by a number of Grant Thornton employees, to ensure continuity of client relationships.
The private wealth team provides specialist wealth advisory services to high net worth individuals and family offices. In addition, the clients of the private wealth team will continue to engage with Grant Thornton for a wide variety of other services.
Source HFS Consulting
This means that since August 31, 2020, the date when the IOOF first announced the acquisition of MLC in the statement issued to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), has lost 119 adviser roles while the number of advisers at MLC Group was down by 71 roles.
On top of that, earlier this week in its quarterly update to the ASX IOOF announced a drop in funds under management and advice of $0.4 billion to $202.4 billion for the quarter to 31 December, 2020.
“In summary not a good week of change for IOOF with current licensees losing advisers and GWM (MLC) also in the red,” HFS’ director Colin Williams said.