Private equity snaps up accounting firm division for £700m

The British private equity giant Apax has bought the professional services division of the one of Britain’s largest wealth managers, Evelyn Partners, for £700 million.
Apax was competing with another UK buyout firm, Bridgepoint, to buy the division, which came to Evelyn Partners through its acquisition of the firm Smith and Williamson in 2020. Bridgepoint is understood to have made a similar bid and was planning to draft in Chris Woodhouse, Evelyn Partners’ former boss, to run the business.
Evelyn Partners employs 4,000 people and is one of the UK’s largest wealth managers with £62.7 billion of assets under management. Its professional services division is the UK’s seventh-largest accounting firm by revenues and provides auditing, tax and restructuring advice. Smith & Williamson was bought by Evelyn Partners in 2020 but will revive its old name.
The buyout firm Permira currently owns 56 per cent of Evelyn Partners, and a quarter is owned by private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Permira is pressing for the professional services sale but intends to retain the business’s wealth management division, which generates most of Evelyn Partners’ sales.
Evelyn Partners was created through a series of mergers between investment and professional services firms. The process began in 2014 when Permira bought Bestinvest, an online wealth manager, and merged it with its rival, Tilney. In 2020, Permira brought in Warburg Pincus as a co-investor to help finance a merger between Tilney and Smith & Williamson, with the combined business being renamed Evelyn Partners.
Chris Woodhouse was Evelyn Partner’s CEO until last year when he was replaced by Paul Geddes, who used to run Direct Line.
The sale comes amid mounting private equity interest in the professional services sector. Last week, the UK buyout firm Cinven shocked the City by taking a majority stake in Grant Thornton, Britain’s sixth- biggest auditor, after a contest that had looked likely to end in a merger with Grant Thornton’s US firm.
Bridgepoint, Apax and Evelyn Partners declined to comment