SIMON BAIN
Rathbone Investment Management has raided rivals Brewin Dolphin to set up a Glasgow operation.
Angus Kerr, until recently a divisional director for Brewin Dolphin in Glasgow, is now on garden leave along with four colleagues while a fifth Lindsay Strachan has been working out of Rathbones' Edinburgh office since last month.
Rathbones, which has been in Edinburgh since 1999 and in Aberdeen since 2010, says the new branch will take its footprint across the UK to 14 offices. It operates a traditional portfolio management service for £100,000-plus clients, with average portfolio size now above £250,000.
David Macaulay, head of the Edinburgh office, said: "In Glasgow we are hoping to get to above 10 people by the end of the year." While Edinburgh was the group's biggest office outside London, having grown assets under management from £200million to £2.2billion, the Aberdeen outpost had found recruitment harder, Mr Macaulay said. "The difference in Glasgow is there is considerably more opportunity to grow the operation."
He said all the Brewin employees had been approached individually, and Mr Kerr and Mr Strachan would be joined in due course by Susan Stevenson, Grant Pinkerton, Julie Smith and Elita Nanson. It was Rathbones' intention to recruit over the coming months across both client-facing investment and account support teams.
In the Glasgow market the new arrival will be taking on Barclays, Investec, Smith &Williamson, Speirs & Jeffrey, and Tilney Bestinvest, where last year's merger saw one London-based Tilney team jump ship to Rathbones.
Mr Macaulay said the new recruits had been impressed with Rathbones' systems, where the group had software ownership giving it more control.
Philip Howell, Rathbones' chief executive said: "We consider the West of Scotland to be an area of significant potential for Rathbones. We have been looking for the right strategic opportunity to establish a local presence and we are delighted that investment managers of this quality have elected to join us."
The firm has a heritage dating back to 1742, over £26bn under management and 39,000 clients.
A Brewin Dolphin spokeswoman said: "We have 24 fully qualified and experienced investment managers and financial planners in our Glasgow office together with their 12 strong support team. The Glasgow office manages over £1 billion of client assets and has an ambitious growth strategy under the dynamic leadership of Stephen Martin. The office added £80m of new funds in 2013 and almost £100m of new funds in 2014 and goes from strength to strength. We can confirm that Angus Kerr has left the company."
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