The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) will today assume control over wealth management group IWL.
The CBA were given the go ahead to take over the Melbourne-based IWL on Friday after the Supreme Court of Victoria approved the parties’ merger scheme agreement.
“We are delighted that this last hurdle has been cleared, and we are excited about moving ahead with the integration of our businesses,” CBA premium business services group executive Stuart Grimshaw said.
Grimshaw said the bank will assume control over the IWL operations from today.
IWL proposes to lodge the court orders approving the scheme with ASIC and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) today.
Following the lodgement of the orders, it is expected IWL shares will be suspended from trading on the ASX from the close of trading today.
The merger of IWL into CBA’s CommSec division gained shareholder approval last month. Shareholder votes in favour of the merger totalled 99.70 per cent.
CBA announced in August that it intended to acquire the whole of IWL for more than $370 million.
In April, IWL sold its financial advisory software, Visiplan, to Iress for around $50 million. Iress also owns competitor Xplan.
IWL chief executive Otto Buttula was unavailable for comment.
