\n speculated upon<\/a> for weeks.\u00a0
\n<\/p>\n
\n “This deal allows Natwest to resume the journey to dominate the
\n wealth space in the UK but to justify the price on top of a
\n difficult integration challenge it is essential that NatWest
\n remains committed in the longer term and retains a certain
\n entrepreneurial spirit for the acquired client advisors rather
\n than impose a top down procedural bureaucracy,” Ray Soudah,
\n founder and chairman of MilleniumAssociates, a firm specialising
\n in M&A and strategic advice for financial services, told this
\n publication today.
\n<\/p>\n
\n NatWest said the transaction has created\u00a0the UK\u2019s \u201cleading
\n private banking and wealth management business,\u201d\u00a0which will
\n transform its savings and investment offering for its 20 million
\n customers. (NatWest is the parent of Coutts, the private bank.)
\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt [the acquisition] accelerates delivery of NatWest Group\u2019s
\n strategy, further diversifying \u00a0income by increasing fee
\n income by circa 20 per cent pre-revenue synergies,\u201d the bank
\n said. \u201cIt also increases NatWest Group\u2019s exposure to a high
\n growth, capital light segment, with PBWM becoming c 20 per cent
\n of group customer assets and liabilities.”<\/p>\n
Funds advised by Permira originally invested in Bestinvest in
\n 2014 and through a small number of combinations, most notably
\n Tilney, Towry and Smith & Williamson, created and integrated the
\n combined group now known as Evelyn Partners.\u00a0With Permira a
\n majority owner, Evelyn’s assets under management increased from
\n about \u00a35 billion to \u00a369 billion. Warburg Pincus became a minority
\n investor in the company upon the acquisition of Smith &
\n Williamson in 2020.
\n<\/p>\n
\n By combining Evelyn Partners\u2019 \u00a369 billion of AUMA with the \u00a359
\n billion AuMA of NatWest Group\u2019s existing private banking and
\n wealth management (PBWM) business, \u00a0NatWest Group will
\n oversee more than \u00a3127 billion of AUMA and total customer assets
\n and liabilities (CAL) of \u00a3188 billion.
\n<\/p>\n
\n
\n Buyback
<\/p>\n
\n NatWest also announced that it is buying back \u00a3750 million ($1.02
\n billion) of shares.<\/p>\n
“At its heart, this transaction is about putting high-quality
\n financial planning and advice into the hands of many more people
\n \u2013 wherever they are on their financial journey,” Emma Crystal,
\n CEO, private banking and wealth management, NatWest Group, said
\n in a statement emailed to WealthBriefing.\u00a0
\n<\/p>\n
\n “We look forward to working with our Evelyn Partners colleagues,
\n combining our capabilities and expertise to build a leading
\n proposition for clients and customers across the UK,” she
\n said.\u00a0
\n<\/p>\n
\n Investors appeared not to cheer the the move today, at least not
\n until NatWest’s fourth-quarter and 2025 full-year financial
\n results are out on Friday this week. Shares were\u00a0down by
\n 4.91 per cent around 10:30 GMT; they have risen, however, about
\n 68 per cent in the 12 months to last Friday, a pattern shared by
\n a number of other UK banks. Shares in Barclays, for example, are
\n up 58 per cent over the same 12-month period; for Lloyds Banking
\n Group, they’re up 63 per cent, and for HSBC, they have risen far
\n less sharply, up 9.7 per cent, although the other banks rose from
\n a lower base and HSBC is predominantly an Asian bank these days.
\n<\/p>\n
\n The NatWest\/Evelyn transaction is expected to be completed by
\n this summer and at this stage the parties involved haven’t yet
\n decided whether to retain the “Evelyn” brand or not,
\n WealthBriefing understands.\u00a0
\n<\/p>\n
\n Consolidation and focus on wealth
<\/p>\n
\n Such a move comes amid continued consolidation in parts of the
\n wealth management sector.\u00a0Areas such as wealth planning -
\n the kind of topic that Evelyn Partners made an important business
\n area – are ones that banks see as revenue channels amidst a
\n continued need for advice and intergenerational wealth transfer -
\n particularly in the UK as tax burdens rise. NatWest already has
\n its Coutts brand – one that is aimed mainly at the high net worth
\n end of the spectrum. It will be interesting to see how this
\n business will sit alongside Evelyn Partners’ capabilities. \u00a0
\n<\/p>\n
\n Getting such approaches to work is not straightforward.\u00a0In
\n October last year, Lloyds Banking Group, one of the main rival
\n lenders to NatWest Group, took full ownership of the Schroders
\n Personal Wealth joint venture that had been originally composed
\n in 2019. HSBC has its private banking and wealth management
\n business in the UK – as well as in fast-growing regions such as
\n Asia, and Barclays has its wealth management and private banking
\n arm division.\u00a0
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since late last year, there’s been speculation that the UK wealth management firm, created out of the merger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21386],"tags":[7955],"class_list":["post-53021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-natwest","tag-natwest"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116670128684848732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"NatWest](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Londonoffices.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n