HBOS's wholly-owned Australian subsidiary yesterday announced it had acquired one of the country's largest independently owned financial planning practices.
St Andrew's Australia, the wealth and insurance arm of HBOS Australia, said yesterday it had bought Brisbane-based Whittaker Macnaught for an undisclosed sum.
The Whittaker acquisition catapults its funds under management from A$500m (£255m) to A$2.1bn and is an important step towards HBOSA fulfilling its ambi- tion of turning the wealth management business into a key profit driver, the bank said.
The Whittaker Macnaught brand will be retained and financial management house's founders, Cheryl Macnaught and Noel Whittaker, will continue to work with St Andrew's to assist growing the business.
St Andrew's managing director, John Van Der Wielen, said it was a very exciting leap forward in the group's aggressive growth plans and demonstrated HBOS Australia's commitment to growing its wealth business.
He added: "HBOS Australia has ambitious and aggressive plans to become a major national provider of financial services and wealth management is critical to a full-service offering.
"We intend to continue to grow our wealth and insurance business to become a substantial contributor to the overall HBOS Australia profit. Although our growth strategy is primarily organic, this acquisition catapults our growth plans forward.
"This acquisition significantly increases our scale as well as substantially adding to our adviser teams both by volume and in the breadth and depth of adviser experience.
"Importantly it also gives us a presence in Queensland and access to a large client base, allowing us to offer products and services to Queenslanders who are HBOS Australia customers through BankWest."
Launched in 1982, and with over 20,000 clients also in Sydney and Perth as well as south-east Queensland, Whittaker Macnaught was seen as such a good catch by HBOS Australia it is understood the holding company opted to break with its policy to grow its business by "pinching" customers and clients from the competition.
The financial services market is highly competitive across Australia, with a burgeoning market in high net worth clients waiting to be wooed with better, more competitive product offers.
And acquisition, in this case became attractive, because of Australian legal constraints restricting consolidation in the banking and finance sector among indigenous banking groups.
Whittaker Macnaught said it had decided to conclude the deal because its client base will now have access to a broader range of products, supported by a HBOS Australia, and that its 65 staff will have access to greater employee benefits and enhanced career opportunities.
HBOS Australia is a holding company formed in 2004 to oversee the operations of the Australian operations of UK financial services group, HBOS plc. HBOSA comprises four diverse financial services operations - BankWest, Capital Finance, St Andrew's Australia and BOS International.
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