Wilsons Advisory has acquired Statton Partners adding the firm’s clients, client assets and advisers to the business.
Brad Gale, CEO of Wilsons Advisory, tells Professional Planner the Statton advisers will fall under the Wilsons Advisory branding.
“It’s been around 125 years now,” Gale says.
“We had a small re-brand 12 to 24 months ago when we changed our name from Wilsons to Wilsons Advisory because we really want to position ourselves as an advisory business across private wealth, institutional research and sales, and corporate finance.”
The Statton Partners team will move into Wilson Advisory’s Sydney offices in the coming months.
Joining the firm will be director Stuart Hudson, director and financial adviser Todd Payne, head of client services Dyan Comino, and client relationship associate Annabel White.
Gale says the catalyst for the acquisition was a growing marketplace for wealth along with critical hires made internally that helped push them to become, what they believe, is a leading service offeror.
“Where we are now, having built all of that out, is having like-minded businesses or like-minded professionals to join our business to help expand,” Gale says.
“To be frank, we’ve invested a lot of money in the capabilities, and we want to make sure they’re being utilised by a core group of good advisers.”
Wilson Advisory head of private wealth Casimir Skillecorn says a “dual-track process” of recruiting and further M&A activity will drive further growth.
“We’re on the lookout for acquisitions; equally, we’re looking out for high-quality advisers,” Skillecorn says.
“The strength of our platform is a real reason that we’re starting to see the drive from recruitment being successful, and a demonstrated track record of being able to take advisers and grow their revenue with the tools that we can provide has been a key differentiating point in the market.”
Gale says the wealth market is fragmented and it’s a complex world from an investment, regulatory, financial planning and tax perspective.
“There’s so many really small practitioners in the market,” Gale says.
“For clients to get the best the outcomes and people to get the best career opportunities they need to have critical infrastructure surrounding them and that’s what we’ve built.”
Among the other appointments recently made, Wilsons Advisory added James Byrne as head of private wealth in the Melbourne office, and Michael McNair who join the investment capability team.
Byrne was mostly recently a vice president at Morgan Stanley and has held roles at Canaccord Genuity, Ord Minnett and Macquarie Group. He will work under Melbourne office head Ted Richards.
McNair was previously executive director – corporate advisory at Evans & Partners, and has also held roles at Macquarie Group (in New York), CIMB Royal Bank of Scotland, and JBWere.
Other new advisers joining the firm include Michael Cooney in Sydney; Sean Lyons and Nick Cooper in Melbourne; Will Hanton, Ben Pierce, and Hilary Troy in Brisbane; and Sam Waldron joining the firm’s Investment Strategy Group.
Wilsons Advisory has also finalised new partner admissions, taking the total number of partners to 58.
The new partners are head of advice Matthew Nicholls, who joined the firm in 2023 from Morgan Stanley; Joe Zhang, who came onboard as a senior sales trader at the end of 2023 after a 20-year career at Credit Suisse; associate research analyst Tom Camilleri; and Charlie Sayers, who joined the firm in 2022 as part of the Chancellor Portfolio Services merger.
