Hargreaves Lansdowne

The company has to act in the best interests of it's shareholders and so is bound to maximise the proceeds, so I take the view that floatations do not offer better value for money than can be found from companies already listed.

If your after a financial, then Aviva & Legal & General offer good value for money.

Daytona

£8.3Bn under administration Turnover £73.5m (50.4m) (annualised +20%pa over last 10 years) Profit £24.3m (13.1m)

I believe that these are comparable businesses -

P/E Cap (m)

Close Brothers 13.6 1486 Collins Stewart 14.4 643 Rathbone Bros 17.1 557 Rensburg Sheppards 16.9 411 Brewin Dolphin 17.9 406 Charles Stanley 16.8 146 Panmure Gordon & Co 9.4 113

So if it were valued on current profit at a P/E of 14-17 I'd expect

It's interesting that they are choosing to float it now, as they must believe that it's the optimum time i.e. that they do not foresee the current level of profit growth continuing beyond the reasonably foreseeable future (say 1 year).

hth

Daytona

In message , Daytona writes

Not sure about them being sufficiently comparable. HG is largely a high volume retail business, not a fund management business, whereas some of the above are basically stockbrokers with a huge sums under 'management' which is quite different from having them 'under administration'. HG makes it profit from making deals with fund managers on their AMCs. Most of the co's you mention do their biz on straightforward client charged AMCs and transaction charges (depending on the management contract).

I agree!

I wasn't sure, but I knew someone would correct me, thanks !

Daytona