Investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown founders in line for £56m pay-out

By MARTIN FLANAGAN
Published on 06/09/2012 00:09

THE two founders of Hargreaves Lansdown scooped a combined £56 million full-year dividend bonanza yesterday as the investment manager and adviser shrugged off volatile markets with a resilient profits performance.

The total dividend rises 20 per cent to 22.59p courtesy of a final pay-out up 27 per cent at 10.65p, and there is a special shareholder payment up 15 per cent to 6.84p.

It means that Peter Hargreaves, who co-founded the company with Stephen Lansdown in 1981, and remains the group’s biggest shareholder with a 32 per cent stake, gets a £34.4m pay-out.

Lansdown, who owns a fifth of the firm and announced yesterday that he was stepping down from the board, receives £21.6m.

The windfalls came as Hargreaves Lansdown posted pre-tax profits up 21 per cent to £152.8m on revenues 15 per cent higher at £238.7m.

The performance outran City expectations, which were for a consensus profit of £149m on revenues of £234m.

They also came as Hargreaves declared himself unimpressed with Tuesday’s government reshuffle by David Cameron. “It’s just one bunch of muppets exchanged for another bunch of muppets,” he said. “Not one of them has actually worked in a real business. In fact, the last person in any government to have done so was probably Margaret Thatcher.”

On trading, Hargreaves revealed that in spite of the broker’s earnings growth, sluggish stock markets in the period caused the rate of new business to slow.

Assets under management grew 7 per cent to £26.3 billion, but net business inflows were 9 per cent lower at £3.2bn than in the previous 12 months.

Hargreaves said the firm was confident it could continue growing profits.

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