The deal is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval. It takes Titan Wealth’s AuM to £9.4bn ($11.7bn, €10.8bn).

Guernsey-based Ravenscroft is a wealth management business. Its two offices in the UK have combined assets under management of £600m and provide discretionary, advisory and execution-only services to nearly 2,300 clients.

The majority of clients are based in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire and they will benefit from access to Titan Wealth’s wider group products and services. The teams from both offices will move across to Titan Wealth.

Andrew Fearon, joint chief executive and head of M&A at Titan, said: “Ravenscroft is a well-run business possessing a high-quality, loyal client base. The business will integrate with our network, enabling greater distribution of the investment and advisory offering that form part of our client to custody solutions and services.”

The acquisition comes several months after International Adviser reported that Titan Wealth had secured a major investment from US-based private equity firm Parthenon Capital.

Offshore focus

Jon Ravenscroft, group chief executive of Ravenscroft, said: “Titan has acquired a number of asset management firms in accordance with its growth strategy and we have spent a considerable amount of time ensuring they were the correct fit. Titan has the same ‘client first’ ethos and I’m confident that this development is the right move for both our UK teams and their clients.

“It will also allow Ravenscroft to focus on the offshore market – which we know extremely well – where the large majority of our clients, shareholders and staff remain.”

Ravenscroft has been busy launching funds over the past year – recently it announced it will be expanding its fund range with the addition of the Ravenscroft Higher Income Fund. The fund will be available in Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

A year earlier, Ravenscroft launched its first fund in eight years when it unveiled the offshore global solutions fund.

Set to launch in May, the fund is designed to help people looking for a higher level of income to take advantage of some of the opportunities that have been created by the rapid rise in interest rates over the last 12 months and will be targeting an initial yield of 6% at launch.

The fund will be available in Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Its objective will be to deliver a higher level of income than is available on more cautious products such as bank deposits. The fund’s portfolio will consist of bond funds, equity funds, and investment trusts, with a focus on maximising current income.

The fund will invest into a range of asset classes, including:

• Developed and emerging market dividend paying equities;
• Investment grade and high yield corporate bonds;
• Specialist bonds;
• Short-term bonds and cash equivalents; and
• Infrastructure bonds and equity.

The firm said: “The team have also been exploring the possibility of launching a higher income strategy for a number of years and are excited that the events of the last 12 months have provided the ideal opportunity to finally bring this product to market.”

Chair John Cowan has been named as chief executive on an interim basis.

The move sees Cowan take up the day-to-day running of the business while also continuing to lead the process of finding a permanent chief executive.

Cowan became executive chairman of SBG in 2014, before moving to become chair of SBG in 2020.

He replaces current interim chief executive Ross Liston, who has decided to leave the business and will be taking up a new role elsewhere in the industry.

Charles Stanley

The wealth manager has named Tom Hawkins as head of strategic partnerships.

Hawkins joins from Quilter, where he was business development manager.

Barclays

Assia Stephansen has been named head of international banking of the private bank.

She has worked in Hong Kong, Canada, across a number of European markets and most recently in the UK. Prior to this role, Stephansen led the India offshore and Africa coverage teams in London within Barclays Private Bank.

Ravenscroft

The investment firm has named Robin Newbould to the board of the parent company, Ravenscroft Holdings Limited.

Newbould, who co-founded Ravenscroft with Jon Ravenscroft in 2005, has been chief operating officer since July 2021 and will now become managing director of operations to work alongside Mark Bousfield, managing director of investments.

The pair will be supported by David Chan, OBE who rejoins Ravenscroft as chief of staff.

Novia Financial

The platform business has appointed Kelly Bowden as head of legal and governance, Gordon Andrews as head of technical and David Edgar as regional sales manager for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Edgar, prior to joining Novia, was a wealth management consultant for Quilter and has worked in senior positions at Standard Life, Scottish Widows and Scottish Equitable.

Bowden was previously group company secretary at the RAC. Andrews was previously a technical manager at Quilter.

Celtic Financial Planning

The Wales-headquartered advice firm has hired Jamie Hughes as a financial planner.

He is based in Prestatyn and was previously a financial planner at Quilter Private Client Advisers.

The firm said it will look to open an office in the region.

The global solutions fund is a multi-manager, global, thematic equities product with a focus on providing long-term returns through investing in funds which are exposed to long-term structural trends and offer access to companies that are working towards solving some of the “most pressing global challenges”, Ravenscroft said.

It will look at:

• Environmental solutions (decarbonisation, pollution avoidance);
• Basic needs (water & waste management, nutrition, education, healthcare access/improvement);
• Energy transition (clean energy, energy efficiency);
• Emerging equality (closing inequality gap, improving lives in emerging markets); and
• Resource scarcity (smart materials, agriculture, getting more out of less).

The fund will be run by Ravenscroft’s multi-manager team, led by Samantha Dovey, and it will initially launch on 31 March 2022 as an offshore fund available in the Channel Islands.

‘Didn’t want to limit the investment opportunities’

Dovey, group head of fund research at Ravenscroft, said: “Over the past few years, we have seen some fantastic new investment opportunities in funds that meet our rigorous fund analysis.

“What started as a handful of environmental solution names, developed into a basket of funds investing in areas like oncology, nutrition and decarbonisation and it became clear that there were more than enough of these highly thematic funds to sit in a standalone product.

“This is not an ESG, green or sustainable impact fund as these terms mean so many different things to different people and we didn’t want to limit the investment opportunities. We are investing in solutions and some of these may include areas that could be excluded through a traditional ESG lens.”

The fund sits alongside the other Ravenscroft strategies– Income, Balanced, Growth and Global Blue Chip – these four existing funds are available to both offshore and onshore clients through Ravenscroft’s offices in Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and the UK.

The investment services group, which has offices in Guernsey, Jersey, Isle of Man and the UK, will buy MitonOptimal Portfolio Management (CI) and Verity Life. The deal is subject to regulatory approval.

MitonOptimal’s team in Guernsey will move across to Ravenscroft once the sale is complete and the two companies will trade as Ravenscroft.

Mark Bousfield, Ravenscroft group managing director, said: ‘There are a number of synergies between MitonOptimal and Ravenscroft’s offerings and we both share a real focus on client service. The acquisition will see MitonOptimal’s experienced team join Ravenscroft, increase our assets under administration and provide us with further opportunities in the Channel Islands, the UK and further afield.”

Simon Sharrott, group chief executive and joint managing director of MitonOptimal Portfolio Management (CI), said: “We are confident that their discretionary investment management offering will appeal to our clients, bringing benefits from greater scale, new service offerings and an expanded distribution reach.

“We are all looking forward to being part of the Ravenscroft team, integrating our business and being instrumental in future growth.”