Select Asset Management (Select) said its employees and directors have bought back almost all of the firm’s equity.
The deal was finalised through a combination of share buy-backs and option grants over existing shares held by non-employee shareholders.
The fund manager said yesterday founders, employees and directors now own 95 per cent of Select, up from 70 per cent.
“We had an external shareholder, Officium Capital, who was interested in exiting the register for their own purposes,” Select chief executive Andrew Fairweather said.
“And we were very keen to facilitate that transaction by getting as much of that equity as possible back to existing employees and we were able to do that with the buy-back and the options grant.”
Fairweather said Officium wanted to exit as it had “shares in Select and also distributed our products” which is a business model that has question marks over it going forward.
Select’s staff will have more control over the firm’s strategy and employees will be more committed to stay with the business amid a war for talent, Fairweather said.
The remaining 5 per cent of Select is owned by Aspect Capital.
Select’s announcement came as the firm reported that its flagship Select Growth Portfolio climbed 28.5 per cent in the year to 30 November 2009 and advanced 8.5 per cent per annum over seven years.
Fairweather said Select is seeing excellent opportunities to provide portfolio solutions to dealer groups and institutional investors.
Select won a deal to provide its model portfolios to wealth management firm Finovia earlier this year.
