Mon, 11 Feb 2013 | BUSINESS SALE
Retail financial adviser network Sesame Bankhall Group has been placed on the market by its owner Friends Life.
Barclays Investment Bank has been brought in to seek out interested buyers for the firm. A private equity-led management buy-out is also being considered.
Friends Life bought Sesame from Misys, a software company, in 2007 for about £75 million, in a deal that included taking on its past liabilities.
Kevin Ryan, an Investec analyst, believes interest in Sesame will be dependent on whether distribution through its advisers can be guaranteed.
He told Mortgage Strategy: “There is an enormous question mark over the entire industry and it is an extremely difficult time to try and sell an advice business the size of Sesame.
“It is out of the question a life company would consider this unless they could ensure everything was going into their products but that would not suit individual Sesame advisers,” he added.
Talks of a possible sale of Sesame had been circulating for years. In 2011 it was thought that Resolution, which owns Friends Life, was ready to sell off Sesame as part of its strategy to divide its open and closed businesses.
If successful, the sale will help Friends Life with its cash flow. It had reported in early 2012 that it needed to make £160 million in cash savings.
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