COG Financial Services has detailed the impact that the acquisition of a 20 per cent stake in Centrepoint Alliance has made on its future business strategy.
In November, COG made an acquisition of a 20 per cent stake in the advice licensee at a cost of $13.1 million. This had been sold by ClearView Wealth, which is moving to exit wealth management to focus its business strategy on life insurance.
Subsequently, in December, COG non-executive director Peter Rollason was appointed as a non-executive director at Centrepoint Alliance.
The group’s share of Centrepoint Alliance profit before tax was $1.1 million for FY24.
At the time of the acquisition, the firm said it wanted to own interests in businesses which are involved in the distribution of financial services and expand a scale business in retail funds management.
Looking forward, it said it hopes to leverage this 20 per cent interest in the business. Centrepoint Alliance is currently the only brand in its financial advice division, compared to three in its asset management and lending division and 11 in broking and aggregation.
“By gaining exposure to Centrepoint Alliance, COG is further applying its expertise in the identification, due diligence, integration and management of interests in financial services distribution businesses, in this case wealth management services,” the business said in its results.
“COG will continue to remain active in the identification of strategic acquisitions (at the right price) to add to the underlying organic growth trajectory”.
The firm has an acquisition finance facility available for corporate activity, and said this contains around $10.4 million for future actions.
Prior to the Centrepoint Alliance deal, the firm made a bid to acquire advice licensee Diverger which was later acquired by Count in March 2024.
“It has formed the view that Diverger’s major shareholders who could control the vote on the offer, in the absence of any public statements to the contrary, are unlikely to vote in favour of COG’s offer,” the statement explained.
The offer proposed to acquire all of the Diverger shares on issue for $1.41 per share, with $0.68 in cash per Diverger share (48 per cent) and $0.73 in COG shares (52 per cent).
