Bank in £254m deal for Collins Stewart

STAFF at Collins Stewart Hawkpoint, the London mid‑cap broker, are bracing themselves for job cuts after an agreed £253.5 million takeover by the Canadian bank Cannacord.

Collins Stewart is the latest in a raft of mid‑ranking City institutions to lose their independence, following recent takeovers of rivals such as Evolution, Arbuthnot Securities and Merchant Securities.

Tim Ingram, chairman of Collins Stewart, commented: “To be successful in a smaller market you have to have size and economies of scale. And in the UK market and elsewhere, this is precisely what this deal achieves.”

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Analysts said that merger cost savings could come in areas such as “real estate, IT, back office and front office”.

Collins employs over 800 people worldwide, most of them in the City, with no presence in Scotland. The company was founded in 1991, in partnership with Singer & Friedlander Securities.

The company grew in prominence under the stewardship of the outspoken City doyen Terry Smith, floating on the stock market in October 2000 during the dotcom boom. Under the terms of the Cannacord offer, the company’s shareholders will receive 57.6p in cash and 0.072607 Cannacord shares.

Yesterday, Collins’s shares closed down 0.75p at 87.75p.

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