Acquisitive Financial Planning and wealth management firm Kingswood has acquired South-Yorkshire-based D.J.Cooke (Life & Pensions) in a deal totalling £1.5m.

The takeover adds £70m in assets under advice and 340 active clients to Kingswood.

Kingwood will pay £1.5m over a two-year period following completion.

The first £749,000 will be paid at closing with the rest paid on a deferred basis, some of which is subject to the achievement of pre-agreed performance targets

DJ Cooke is a Financial Planning firm specialising in retirement and investment planning. 

David Cooke, CEO, is the sole adviser. He will join the Kingswood group as part of the deal to help smooth client transition.

On an underlying basis for the 12-month period up to 31 December 2021, D J Cooke generated unaudited revenue of approximately £474,000 and unaudited EBITDA of approximately £227,000.

David Lawrence, UK CEO at Kingswood, said the deal is first of many for the firm this year.

He said: ‘’I am delighted to welcome David and the team at DJ Cooke Financial Planning Limited into Kingswood.  This is our first acquisition of 2022 and we continue to have a strong pipeline of high-quality UK opportunities under negotiation, five of which are in the exclusive due diligence stage.’’

The acquisition will be funded with money recently received by Kingswood from the issue of new convertible preference shares, under the terms of its Convertible Preference Share subscription agreement with private equity firm Pollen Street Capital.

Kingswood's partnership with Pollen Street has to date has provided equity of £77.4m to support existing and future acquisitions.

Following the deal Kingswood’s assets under advice will have risen to over £8bn from a combination of both retail and institutional clients.

Kingswood has made a number of acquisitions over the past year.

It completed the acquisition of asset manager and IFA the IBOSS Group less than two months after announcing the deal. Kingswood hailed the deal as a “milestone” acquisition.

Kingswood paid an initial cash sum of £9.6m for Metnor Holdings, paid on closing with deferred consideration of up to £6.4m, payable over a two year period, and a performance-based earn out linked to three years of EBITDA growth.

The Financial Planning firm also completed the acquisition of two advice firms in December, Money Matters (North East) of Redcar and Lee Smythe & Associates Ltd of Faversham.