Shore Capital jumped into the top tier of London stockbrokers on Wednesday after snapping up rival Stockdale Securities in a £9 million deal.
The tie-up, outlined last month, makes Shore the fourth largest broker by UK-listed clients behind Numis, JP Morgan Cazenove and Peel Hunt. Shore will pay £4 million up front and up to £4.9 million depending on performance targets. The Stockdale brand will disappear.
A total of 41 employees will move to Shore, which will take on extra office space to accommodate the new staff.
“We always said if the right thing came along we’d look at it,” said Shore co-chief executive Simon Fine.
“The combination will let us be strong in a perhaps more challenging market. There’s a lot of macro stuff going on to contend with. We’ve all been around long enough to know you have to adapt to these type of environments.”
Brokers have been under pressure due to new Mifid II rules, which made research harder to fund, and slow stock market activity.
Finncap has already merged with Cavendish Corporate Finance while Autonomous sold out to AllianceBernstein.
