Hargreaves Lansdown agrees £5.4bn takeover
Bristol-born investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown has agreed a takeover offer of £5.4 billion by a group of investors including CVC Private Equity and Nordic Capital.
In its final results, issued today, Hargreaves Lansdown revealed net new business of £4.2 billion, assets under administration up 16 per cent to £155.3 billion and 1,882,000 active clients, an increase of 78,000 in the year.
Dan Olley, Chief Executive Officer, said: "It has been an eventful first 12 months, not least with the approach from the consortium which has today resulted in a firm and final offer for HL, with the Independent Board of HL intending to unanimously recommend the cash offer to shareholders."
"As I made clear on joining, we need to help more people across the UK save and invest to secure their financial future, so for us this is more than a mission, it's an obligation. I have therefore been reassured during process that the consortium are aligned with our mission.
"This year a key priority has been getting back to the fundamentals: continually striving for great client service, providing a great client experience and great client value.
"I'm pleased to see our strategy and focus on our priorities beginning to deliver results. Net new business for FY24 was down on FY23 at £4.2 billion, with a slow first half reflecting the long-term historic trend. However, in the second half of the year we started to see the year-on-year trend level off from the historic slow decline as our work on client service levels, digital experience improvements and proposition enhancements started to come through.
"We delivered revenue of £764.9 million up four per cent vs. FY23. Our increased focus on cost discipline through the year has allowed us to slow cost growth, especially in the second half of the year, delivering an underlying profit of £456 million, again up four per cent year on year.
"This year also saw us start to accelerate our use of data to drive decision making and client insights. This led us to launch the UK's only multi-bank cash ISA, allowing clients to maximise their FSCS coverage on a single platform, a life-styled Ready Made Pension fund and the recently launched Managed and Multi-Index Funds which accounted for 80 per cent of our HL funds growth in Q4."
He added: "With the momentum we are building I'm very positive about the future for HL."
