Davy Stockbrokers looks to the North to grow

Davy Stockbrokers is actively targeting a number of further acquisition opportunities in Northern Ireland as a means of more easily entering the UK market.

The group — Ireland’s leading provider of wealth and asset management and financial advisory services —this week reached agreement to buy Trusted Advisor Group (TAG), a three-year old Dublin-based company which provides outsourcing services to independent financial advisory firms.

Providing support in the areas of compliance, IT, research, marketing and business development, TAG services around 30 of the larger and most progressive advisory firms in Ireland and its acquisition will enhance Davy’s presence in the intermediary sector.

“TAG is a great fit for Davy. [Its] members include many of the most progressive advisory firms in Ireland,” Davy Group CEO, Tony Garry said.

The TAG deal is Davy’s fifth acquisition in the last couple of years. As well as taking over AIB’s former investment management arm and the former Bloxham Stockbrokers’ private client business, it acquired Dublin-based investment consultancy, iCubed and independent financial advisory provider Square Seven.

The latter is based in the North and has been subsumed into Davy’s Belfast-based private client division. It is understood that Davy is now looking at further Northern buys — predominantly in the intermediary/broker/advisory area — and to use its familiarity with that regulatory market as a means of expanding into the UK market, where it already has one office.

“The UK-centric investment, operational and regulatory processes we have established in Northern Ireland gives Davy the platform to assess growth opportunities into the wider UK mainland, and to build out our service offering to IFAs in Northern Ireland and Great Britain,” Davy Private Clients (NI) managing director, Stephen Felle said after the Square Seven deal.

But apart from the opportunity to use the North as a springboard into the UK, Davy sees Northern Ireland as being a material part of its overall private client business and an area — in its own right — of key strategic growth in the coming years.

“We will continue to review further potential acquisitions in Northern Ireland, such as that offered by Square Seven,” Mr Felle said.