Reeves Moses' new owner has aggressive plans for New Zealand
Sovereign's decision to sell financial planning chain Reeves Moses InvestorCare (RMI) to the Brisbane-based Harts Group signals the end of an era for the advisory industry.
Wednesday, December 15th 1999, 12:00AM
Harts managing director Ric Hayter says RMI founders Roger Moses and Gary Stevens will become non-executive directors of the firm from January 1, but they will be retained in a "consultancy capacity". John O'Sullivan will take over running the firm and Paul Newson will be responsible for sales and marketing, he says.
Hayter says the Harts Group is keen to expand in New Zealand and wanted to broaden the range of services offered by RMI.
Its core business in Australia is providing accountancy services. One of those businesses is mobile accounting service Hometax which was, until recently, 28 per cent owned by Sovereign.
Its other main line of business is in property where it does development, syndication and sells residential properties as investments.
"We do it as a financial adviser, not as a real estate agent," he says.
The firm uses qualitative research to identify suitable properties.
Harts is currently looking at buying other financial planning firms in New Zealand as well as insurance brokerages and accountancy firms.
The firm is talking to a number of large financial planning firms, and it was also interested in acquiring "boutique" operations. On the accounting side Harts would like to buy some existing practices which had a fee base of about $1 million or more, and it is also interested in insurance brokers.
Hayter would like to have 25 financial planning franchises throughout New Zealand, plus 25 accounting practices and 25 mobile tax franchises.
He says New Zealand is attractive because it is relatively close to Brisbane (closer than Perth and Adelaide) and there are some synergies between the financial services industry in both countries.
Hayter says New Zealand is "where Australia was a year ago" and he believes compulsory superannuation will be introduced here.
Harts is planning to list on the Australian Stock Exchange in May.
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