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Schroders’ chief executive has pledged the company will retain its wealth management business Cazenove following a £9.9bn takeover by US fund manager Nuveen.
Richard Oldfield told the FT there was “absolutely no reason to think” Cazenove would be sold, moving to dispel questions over the future of the brand after it was not namechecked when the FTSE 100 group announced the deal earlier this month.
“The wealth channel for us is really important,” he said, adding: “We want to grow it.”
“The commitments that Nuveen has made are about our entire business . . . when they talked about keeping people, keeping the business, keeping the brand, that applies to the whole business.”
Schroders’ board has agreed to a 612p-a-share offer from Nuveen — part of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America — and the deal has the backing of the Schroder family, which owns 42 per cent of the London-listed group.
Oldfield has insisted the sale is “a good deal for the UK” and that the newly merged group will keep London as its “non-US headquarters”.
Schroders, whose business spans asset management, private markets and wealth management, bought Cazenove in 2013 for £424mn in a deal that combined two of the City of London’s oldest names.
Oldfield said the wealth management business was “growing really strongly” and noted that it has a lot of charities as customers. Schroders Wealth Management, the brand used for its overseas operations, has offices in Singapore, Switzerland and the US.
He added that Nuveen also has a “very big wealth business” in the US, working with thousands of investment advisers.
The combined group will have nearly $2.5tn of assets under management.
A statement on the day the deal was announced said there was no intention “to make any material reductions in the employee base of Schroders” for two years after the transaction completes.
OIdfield said: “It’s going to take a year to go through and do all the analysis . . . to come up with the right decisions about any changes that we want to make.”
He added: “What we have to avoid is that we confuse the client with offering two products that are exactly the same. That’s where we’re going to try and eliminate any overlap.”
Not all shareholders are supportive of the deal. James Lowen and Clive Beagles of UK Equity Income Fund at J O Hambro Capital Management said they believed the takeover price was about 10-15 per cent below what they believed was a “fair value”.
Oldfield said in response that “every shareholder will have a different perspective on whether or not they got good value”.
“We have three different advisers who have all provided fair value opinions to the board . . . so we feel pretty good about the price.”
He added that he would not receive equity in the enlarged business as part of the deal and that “no member of the management team here at Schroders gets any additional gain out of this transaction”.
Nuveen said: “The transaction involves the acquisition of the full Schroders platform and would bring together highly complementary businesses.”