The chief executive of Shadforth Financial Group has rejected speculation there is discord within the firm’s adviser ranks and the planned merger with Snowball Financial Group is set to act as the catalyst for a planner exodus.
Shadforth’s Tony Fenning said there was no truth to industry speculation that a number of the group’s advisory practices were looking to depart once a merger with Snowball was approved.
“The deal speaks for itself. I’ve not had a single shareholder suggest they were not going to accept the deal and I haven’t had a single person say it’s a bad idea,” Fenning said.
At the time of InvestorDaily‘s deadline, more than 80 per cent of Shadforth shareholders had accepted the Snowball offer.
Fenning said rather than expecting any advisers to leave, the firm had experienced “dramatically increased levels” of interest in people joining the group.
“I would be very surprised if there was any serious movement from our advisers,” he said.
“We’ve got a pretty good retention strategy in that we’ve got a group of people committed to wanting to be part of the best advice firm in Australia who have all got reasonable equity stakes, somewhere between reasonable to very large equity stakes, and who have busted a gut to build the business over the last five years.”
He said there was an enormous amount of “good will and positive energy” in what was a difficult time from a market perspective and also in terms of regulatory threat.
“With the smaller end of the market, people are either thinking of staying small and in which case they are going to tag onto someone bigger, or if they are already medium and looking for a strategy, then someone like us is very interesting because we’ve got the infrastructure to implement client portfolios, and we’ve got the quality behind the advice part,” he said.
“We’ve been talking to a lot of people and people haven’t really moved in the last few years, but I suspect they are about to start over the next couple of years.”
