Close Brothers Group plc is a UK merchant banking group, providing lending, deposit taking, wealth management and securities trading. The company is listed on the

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...

and is a constituent of the

FTSE 250 Index The FTSE 250 Index ( "Footsie") is a capitalisation-weighted index consisting of the 101st to the 350th largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. Promotions and demotions to and from the index occur quarterly in March, June, Septem ...

History

Close Brothers was founded in 1878 by

William Brooks Close William Brooks Close (1853–1923) was a British businessman active in the Midwestern United States. He first arrived in the United States during the summer of 1876 to compete in a regatta in Philadelphia while he was the president of the Camb ...

and his brothers Fred and James Close, who started offering farm mortgages in

Sioux City, Iowa Sioux City () is a city in Woodbury and Plymouth counties in the northwestern part of the U.S. state of Iowa. The population was 85,797 in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Iowa. The bulk of the city is in Woodbury County ...

. In 1897, William Brooks Close paid £10,000 to the US government for the right to build

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...

's first

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a p ...

the

White Pass and Yukon Route The White Pass and Yukon Route (WP&Y, WP&YR) is a Canadian and U.S. Class III narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other rai ...

. It was the subject of a

management buy-out A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of 19 ...

in 1978 and was first listed on the

in 1984. In the 1980s and 1990s the company began a phase of significant expansion through the acquisition of a large number of specialist businesses which included Winterflood Securities in 1993,

Hill Samuel Hill Samuel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group's Offshore Private Banking unit. It was formerly a leading British merchant bank and financial services firm before the takeover by TSB Group Plc. in 1987, which itself merged with ...

's Corporate Finance Division in 1996 and Rea Brothers (established 1919) in 1999. In March 2008 Close Brothers acquired UK short-term and bridging lender Commercial Acceptances Group for around £31m. In May 2009 it was announced that the corporate finance business was to be acquired by

Daiwa Securities is a Japanese investment bank that is the second largest securities brokerage after Nomura Securities. Major subsidiaries include ''Daiwa Securities'', which offers retail services such as online trading to individual investors and investment ...

SMBC, a Japanese investment banking venture, leaving Close Brothers focused on capital markets, securities trading, lending and investment management solutions. Close Brothers disposed of Close Brothers Seydler Bank AG (“Seydler”), its securities business in Germany, to Oddo et Cie in 2014.

Operations

Close Brothers Banking division provides specialist

lending In finance, a loan is the lending of money by one or more individuals, organizations, or other entities to other individuals, organizations, etc. The recipient (i.e., the borrower) incurs a debt and is usually liable to pay interest on that ...

to small and medium-sized businesses and individuals across a diverse range of asset classes, and also offers deposit taking services. Winterflood, a leading

market maker A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or an individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the '' bid–ask spread'', or ''turn.'' The benefit to the firm is that ...

in the UK, trades in relevant MTFs and major dark pools and covers nearly all

LSE LSE may refer to: Computing * LSE (programming language), a computer programming language * LSE, Latent sector error, a media assessment measure related to the hard disk drive storage technology * Language-Sensitive Editor, a text editor used ...

listed stocks, as well as Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and ICAP Securities and Derivatives Exchange. The company's chief executive is Adrian Sainsbury, who has been in the role since September 2020. The company faced criticism over the size of his pay increase in November 2021. Its board has been chaired by Mike Biggs since May 2017.

References

External links

Close Brothers Group
{{Authority control Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group Close Brothers Group