Wealth management and advisory firm Findex has announced an investment partnership with private equity firm Mercury Capital.
The deal will see Mercury Capital acquire a 40 per cent stake that is currently held by alternative asset manager KKR. It will allow Findex to enhance its wealth accounting model for private and SME clients, provide additional investment capital, and appoint new representatives to the Findex board.
The transaction will make Mercury Capital and Findex staff and executives the majority owners of Findex’s platform.
Established in 2010, Mercury Capital is a Sydney-based private equity firm managing over $2 billion in funds. It seeks to invest in businesses that are leaders in their industry, possess high-quality management teams, have well-developed and scalable systems, and demonstrate the potential to achieve rapid and sustained growth.
With 2,500 staff members across 100 offices in Australia and New Zealand, Findex said the move will help it progress towards its target of tripling the business size over the next five years. Mercury will focus on building the Findex team and invest further in technology to help grow business to Findex’s target markets.
Mercury Capital founder and chief executive, Clark Perkins, said: “Findex’s strong growth profile, management capabilities, deep digital investment and low-risk salaried adviser model, which brings accountants and financial planners together, under one roof, creates an exciting opportunity for enhanced, market-leading service provision. It positions Findex to continue to significantly expand its business across Australia and New Zealand.”
Spiro Paule, Findex founder and managing director, said: “This exciting new relationship with Mercury Capital demonstrates that Findex is comfortable with and adept to partnering with smart capital to better enable Findex to further expand and enhance our best-in-class financial services to a vast demographic of business and private clients which are typically underserved, particularly in regional areas.
“With our focus firmly on customer value and transparency over more than 30 years, Findex’s model of combining best practice wealth management advice with accounting services via the one skilled multidisciplinary firm is undoubtedly leading the charge in the industry and saving businesses and the people in them significant time and money. This has never been more critical as cost, skills shortages, and supply chain and disruption issues mount.”
