As part of the £4.3m deal Neilly, chief executive of Edinburgh and London-based Intelli, will join the Canadian buyer.
Rutherford will remain with Midas where he recently became executive chairman.
Midas, which has been battling financial problems, will no longer have a presence north of the border.
Neilly said he had instigated the sale of Intelli: “Midas didn’t say ‘we are going to sell you’. I said that if we are going to develop the business within Midas Group I need to invest more.”
He said moving to Canaccord Adams would give him more firepower when it came to raising money for clients.
“They have got a much bigger platform. We bring an experience corporate finance team. There is a very good fit.
“There is no falling out with Midas.”
Rutherford too played down the significance of the split. He told The Herald: “Gordon and I have worked together for a long time and will continue to work together going forward.”
Neilly and Rutherford established Intelli in 1999 after their previous business Rutherford Manson Dowds was bought by Deloitte.
At RMD they had played a prominent role in the Scottish corporate finance market of the 1990s.
This continued at Intelli which has been involved in 150 deals in the last decade, including Artemis’s reverse takeover of ABN Amro Fund Managers in 2002.
Rutherford stepped back from day-to-day operations at Intelli around 2003 but returned, initially as non-executive chairman of Midas, in March last year. Rutherford maintained that the sale of Intelli was a strategic move.
“It allows Midas to concentrate more on its core asset management activities,” he said.
Canaccord Adams will pay £4.3m for Intelli. This is £700,000 less than Midas predecessor firm Iimia stumped up for Intelli four years ago.
Neilly told The Herald that some firms had sought to hire the Intelli team, leaving Midas without compensation. But he wanted to ensure “there was a proper solution for Midas Group” as well as his clients.
Intelli made a pre-tax profit of £503,000 last year on revenues of £3.8m.
Darren Ellis, chief operating officer of Canaccord Capital, the group’s UK arm, said it had long been eyeing up a Scottish base.
He said: “There are a number of Scottish institutions that we trade with and we have a number that we do not trade with. Having a platform in Scotland, in Edinburgh, is a very good addition to what we do.”
Canaccord Adams is best known in the energy and mining spaces but has been seeking to broaden its operations.
It hired an investment trust trading team from Panmure Gordon in 2007 and a general financials team from Landsbanki last year.
Ellis added having the Edinburgh office would allow the company to hire staff who wanted to work in Scotland.
The Intelli deal will add 10 people to Canaccord Adams’s 120-strong UK workforce. None of the Intelli team, including Neilly, is tied-in to work for Canaccord for a minimum period.
Rutherford became executive chairman of Midas in March when chief executive Simon Edwards stepped down from the board as the company was forced into a debt-for-equity swap with Bank of Scotland.
The bank, now part of Lloyds Banking Group, took a 17.5% equity stake and £14m of high interest preference shares.
Rutherford said some proceeds from the sale would be used to repay preference shares.
Shares in AIM-listed Midas fell 1p or 5.26% to 18p. The sale of Intelli is expected to complete on October 1.
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