National Bank buys Wellington West

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This article was published 26/05/2011 (5475 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After months of speculation, National Bank has purchased Wellington West Holdings Inc.

The Montreal-based bank paid $333 million for the 83 per cent of Wellington West it didn’t already own.

The deal will be officially announced this morning.

In an unusual twist, the English Canada assets of National Bank will be merged with the wealth-management assets of Wellington West, one of the leading independent financial-services firms in Canada.

Charlie Spiring, Wellington West’s CEO and founder, said he will oversee the non-Quebec wealth-management assets, which total about $67 billion, out of his Winnipeg head office.

Wellington West has four primary divisions: retail brokerage, financial planning, capital markets and asset management.

Company shareholders, the vast majority of which are brokers, will have the choice to take cash or shares from National Bank.

There will also be a “significant” retention package on top of the purchase price, encouraging brokers to stay on with the new entity for three to five years. That could be worth approximately $200,000 per broker, Spiring said.

National Bank, which has gradually accumulated 17 per cent of Wellington West over the past several years, has made no bones about its aspirations to become a truly national player by expanding beyond its Quebec base, particularly on the wealth-management side.

Wellington West has 180 brokers across the country, $10.6 billion in assets under administration and annual revenues just shy of $200 million. Spiring said just a “handful” of positions will be eliminated from Winnipeg and all of them will be voluntary.

“We didn’t give out any pink slips Wednesday and we’re not going to do that on Thursday,” Spiring said. “Some people have told us they wouldn’t mind moving on. Some of them are going to help other companies grow and some are going to retire.”

“We’ve made a lot of millionaires in Winnipeg.”

Spiring said National Bank has agreed to move a handful of jobs to Winnipeg from Montreal, including some key regional positions.

“Our Winnipeg talent will fill those jobs. I used my Yes! Winnipeg hat to make sure we did the right things. We worked very hard to make sure there was strong retention in Winnipeg,” he said.

A Wellington West employee, who did not want to be named, said the company told a shareholders’ teleconference call that 200 employees will lose their jobs in the merger.

The employee contacted the Free Press on behalf of a group of Wellington West workers who feel betrayed by the company’s sale.

“We want to try to tell the real story before Charlie Spiring and (Wellington West president) Kish Kapoor try to put a positive spin on it,” the employee said.

Spiring is the chairman of Yes! Winnipeg, a city organization charged with increasing the number of head offices in Winnipeg and encouraging existing firms here to expand.

Spiring said the name issues haven’t been finalized but it appears likely the Wellington West moniker will disappear from the financial-services landscape in the not-too-distant future.

“On Day 1, our name will be out there but a year from now, I’m sure the sign will come down and the name will change. (National Bank) has the right to do that,” he said.

Wellington West was founded in 1993 after Spiring left Midland Walwyn. At the time, the company had four advisers, eight employees and $200 million in assets under administration. It hit $1 billion in assets in 2002.

— with files by Alan Small

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca