AZNGA today signed a binding sale and purchase agreement to acquire the entire capital of Empowered Financial Partners (“EFP”) via its Australian subsidiary, AZ Next Generation Advisory Pty Ltd (“AZ NGA”). The agreement includes a share swap of 49% of EFP’s equity for AZ NGA shares and a progressive buy back of these shares over the next ten years. This latest agreement follows the recently announced deals reached with Eureka Whittaker Macnaught (“EWM”), Pride Advice (“Pride”), Lifestyle Financial Planning Services (“LFPS”), Financial Lifestyle Partners (“FLP”), Harvest Wealth (“HW’), Wise Planners (“WP”) and RI Toowoomba (“RIT”) and is a continuation of AZ NGA’s objective of consolidating high quality Australian financial practices providing wealth management services to retail, HNW and institutional clients in Australia.
Empowered Financial Partners originally began trading in 1994 as Williamstown Financial Services and is led by its principals Jason Andrew, Bernie Cooney and Richard Owen who have entered into long term contracts to ensure business continuity. Empowered Financial Partners is responsible for A$134 of funds under advice and operates out of Melbourne. Empowered Financial Partners provides values-based financial planning, which includes investment and asset allocation advice, retirement planning, insurance, strategic financial planning advice and financial literacy services to its client base.
Empowered Financial Partners was the recipient of the 2015 RI Advice Groups Platinum award. This award is given to the top ten practices of the RI group who demonstrate the strongest compliance, client centric and collaborative values amongst the 200 strong community of member firms.
Paul Barrett, AZ NGA CEO states: “Jason, Bernie and Richard run an outstanding, full service financial planning practice with a strong value proposition for their clients. They are committed to developing a lifelong relationship with their clients and staff, and provide an outstanding example of how a professional firm should be run.”
Jason Andrew said, ”AZ NGA’s long term vision and thinking resonates with the values of our business, as well as the approach we like to have with our clients. It’s a natural cultural fit and easy decision for us to be entering into a relationship with like-minded partners. Our experience with them so far has been very collaborative and we are excited to be transitioning now into the next phase as we continue to grow together for many years to come”
Pietro Giuliani, Chairman and CEO of Azimut Holding, comments: “We are starting the year in building our Australian franchise from where we closed a successful 2015. After having achieved a record year at Group level in 2015, we are happy to continue attracting talented entrepreneurs to our partnership to develop further the business backed by a strong pipeline.”
AZ NGA announced its first acquisition on May 8th, 2015, when it acquired EWM. This was followed by the acquisition of the Pride Group on May 27th 2015, LFPS on July 15th 2015, FLP on Sept 24th 2015, Wise Planners
on Oct 19th 2015, Harvest Wealth of December 17th, RIT on January 29th , and now Empowered Financial Partners. This latest deal is in line with AZ NGA long term business plan to continue to acquire high calibre businesses. AZ NGA has shortlisted a number of financial planning firms for further potential consolidation.
