King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin has advised Inflexion on its 50.1% investment in Succession Holdings Limited (Succession), one of the UK’s largest privately owned wealth management businesses.

Inflexion, a UK-based mid-market private equity firm, invests in high growth, niche businesses that are headquartered in the UK but have opportunities to expand internationally. The company has tracked the performance of Succession’s post-RDR advisory space model for three years.

Succession was founded in 2009 and offers financial advice to private and corporate clients. It employs more than 110 people across the UK and has 62 member firms which advise on over £8bn of assets. The company’s business model was formed around regulatory changes introduced by the Retail Distribution Review (RDR), which aimed to improve standards of financial advice, and consumers’ understanding of the cost of investing.

Inflexion’s investment will enable the Succession management team to continue its on-going IFA acquisition programme, buying a majority stake in 50 of its best advisory firms around the country that it currently has a minority holding in, before 2017.

Andrew Wingfield, Corporate partner at King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin, said: “Financial services in the UK are budding with recent growth in the independent wealth management sector being driven in part by changes to regulation, such as the Retail Distribution Review. Succession’s business model has been very successful in making this work to its advantage and the company’s continued growth signifies an important investment for our client, Inflexion."

The King & Wood Mallesons team was led by Corporate partner Andrew Wingfield with associates James Darbyshire and Janine Suttie, with Tax partner Stephen Pevsner and associate Anna Shemeld and Employment partner Carl Richards and associate Stephen Hall.