Wealth manager and Financial Planner Kingswood has completed the acquisition of Surrey Chartered Financial Planner firm Regency Investment Services.

The takeover of the Egham-based IFA increases Kingswood's adviser team to 67 and assets under advice or management to £5bn for more than 16,000 active clients.

The deal comes after Kingswood Holdings recently reported a hit this year to new business from the Coronavirus pandemic.

The firm said remote working had made it harder to onboard new clients but business had now begun to pick up.

Regency provides financial advice to individuals and corporates mainly the London area. It employs 12 staff including six IFAs and manages £320m in AUA/AUM on behalf of circa 1,000 clients.

The business has been acquired for £3.45m in cash, payable over a 3-year period. Some £1.38m was paid at closing and the balance will be paid on a deferred basis subject to Regency meeting pre-agreed recurring revenue and EBITDA hurdles over a 3-year year period. An additional deferred payment of maximum £1.2m is potentially payable at the end of the 3-year period subject to an EBITDA target over that period.

Separately, Kingswood said that the second and final deferred consideration payment for East Yorkshire IFA Marchant McKechnie, acquired in October 2018, has been made.

The Regency acquisition, the Marchant McKechnie deferred consideration payment, and some “additional transaction related costs” have been funded by Kingswood's  issue of 2.9m new convertible preference shares, under the terms of a Convertible Preference Share subscription agreement with private equity firm HSQ Investment, a subsidiary of funds managed and/or advised by Pollen Street Capital Limited.

Gary Wilder, group CEO at Kingswood,  said: "We are delighted to welcome Dominique Vinecombe and the Regency team to Kingswood.

“Dominique will continue to focus on delivering exceptional quality service to Regency's client base. We recognise over time the major opportunity to migrate existing and new clients to Kingwood's extensive and growing range of managed investment solutions on our DFM platform, underpinning the value of a fully integrated wealth and investment management business."