The loss-making private wealth business Duncan Lawrie is being broken up and sold after its owner decided that the economic environment was too tough to continue.
Brewin Dolphin is paying £28 million for Duncan Lawrie Asset Management, which runs £735 million for about 1,000 customers, while the £45 million loan book is going to Arbuthnot Latham, a private bank.
Duncan Lawrie’s Isle of Man offshore trust services business is also for sale. The disposals are likely to mark the end of the Duncan Lawrie name.
The private bank was set up in 1971, but its roots date back 150 years to two Scotsmen, Alexander Lawrie and Walter Duncan, who went to Calcutta as tea planters. They set up a company that has evolved into the Kent-based, AIM-listed Camellia, which employs 76,000 people in countries from India to Kenya and in operations spanning tea plantations, aerospace manufacturing and refrigerated lorries.
Camellia said it had decided to sell the business because “lower interest rates and other factors have changed the outlook for private banking”.