Financial services group Abaco have paid £6.17m for Bridgers, the 21-office Leatherhead-based residential estate agents — it may not be their last such purchase.
In a cash deal with money raised from a vendor placing, the 13 equity partners in Bridgers will now become employees of Abaco, formerly Greencoat Properties, although several will join a board of management. All 78 full-time and 44 part-time Bridgers employees will be retained.
There will not be much change, according to John Marchington of Bridgers, and they will carry on much as before. One of the attractions for Abaco is that it gives an outlet for their mortgage-broking subsidiary, John Charcol Ltd.
Turnover at Bridgers has gone from £1m pa to £2.6m pa in five years and profit has risen from £115,000 to £531,000.
Peter Goldie, an Abaco director, says they were delighted to get “one of the last independents”. There are, it seems, few medium-sized firms left for the taking. This deal gives Abaco 16 Surrey outlets, two in Hampshire and three in Sussex.
John Charcol have a property services division in south-east London, which demonstrated the benefits on their mortgage-broking side of owning a chain of agents.
Insurance brokers next?
Abaco are still talking to other agents, but it is clear that the urgency has now gone and they will probably look next for an insurance-broking business, although they are looking at all sorts of businesses in the financial sector. They already own an 18 1/2% stake in commercial estate agents Anthony Browne Stewart, however, and the Bridgers deal will add a small amount of commercial property work to that.
The Abaco deal was not the only one on Bridgers’ table either for they had been talking to another potential buyer but preferred “the feel” of Abaco.
There were two months of negotiations and, according to John Marchington, the deal was not a defensive one to stave off Black Horse or one of the others, nor was it chosen on the basis of price.
The shares placed went to Abaco’s major shareholders, British & Commonwealth Shipping and Canada Life Insurance, as well as to other institutional clients of Messel, Abaco’s stockbrokers.
