The more than 100 financial advisers within privately-owned dealer group Matrix Financial Solutions look set to be rewarded in the event a sale of the group is successful.
Matrix managing director Rick Di Cristoforo told InvestorDaily the decision to place Matrix on the market included considerations for its 104 advisers.
“That [adviser reward] is absolutely the bit that we’ve spent the longest time on and that’s the reason why we’ve gotten such widespread support from shareholders and advisers,” Di Cristoforo said.
“This EGM [extraordinary general meeting] included shareholders and adviser principals and we took the vote on different matters from all groups and this is so important. This is crucial. At the end of the day this is how you have a group hold together well.”
Di Cristoforo said at the EGM, held last Wednesday, company board members and key stakeholders gave approval for the Matrix board to seek expressions of interest for an external investor.
“We’ve very carefully gone through a number of strategic options over a number of years and said where are we up to? We’ve spent a lot of time talking with our stakeholders, which is why we have such wide support across the group,” he said.
“I think that’s a massive strength for Matrix. It’s not five people saying it; it’s the whole group.”
The Matrix shareholders said their preference for an external investor was around having an investor that intended to help with the future development of the group as opposed to an investor who was only interested in purchasing a distribution channel, he said.
In terms of his own future, in light of a sale, Di Cristoforo was quick to state it was his intention to remain.
“Yes. That’s a very easy answer, [and] yes that would be my intended future,” he said.
He also said the sale of the company had no links to challenges brought on by the federal government’s Future of Financial Advice (FOFA) reforms.
In terms of next steps, Matrix is preparing paperwork for due diligence processes.
“We’ve got to get things like confidentiality agreements done, briefing papers done. We’ve got lots of material about the company which will allow due diligence so that is being brought together now,” Di Cristoforo said.
“The honest truth is that we have not spoken to anybody as yet, in a real way. At the moment we’ve had some people saying to us we’d definitely like to sign a non-disclosure agreement.”
Despite news of the sale, he said Matrix intended to push ahead with its planned new venue stream strategies.
While he would not reveal details of the strategies, he said one out of the planned three new strategies was already in implementation mode.
The second strategy is in process mode, with the third idea in early development.
“By the time this investor process finishes, I suspect we’ll be a long way down the path of doing all these things anyway,” Di Cristoforo said.
Matrix’s sale comes just months after fellow privately-owned group Count Financial informed the market it was in buyout discussions with Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) in August.
At the time, Count chairman Barry Lambert highlighted FOFA challenges as the key impetuous to its discussions with CBA.
In May, non-institutionally-owned dealer groups Snowball and Shadforth Financial Group announced they would merge.
