Panmure back to profit growth after long slump
PANMURE Gordon’s shares soared yesterday as the stockbroker and investment bank reported its first strong set of profits after a major turnaround.
Pre-tax profits came in at £1.9m for the first half of the year, up from just £335,000 in the same period of 2013.
The firm has been blighted for years by the ill-fated takeover of ThinkEquity in 2007. Panmure sold the firm again in 2012, but overall lost around £80m over the course of the deal.
Commission and trading revenues climbed 25.7 per cent on the year to £5.4m, while expenses in the division slid 20.5 per cent to £758,000.
Meanwhile corporate finance and related income jumped 22 per cent to £11.5m – aided by the surge in flotations and other equity capital markets activity this year.
Panmure’s boss Phillip Wale hopes a more sustained recovery will help the business’ fortunes in the coming years.
“Business has perked up in 2014, but trading volumes are still one-third of what they were before the crisis, and were very low over the summer,” Wale told City A.M.
The corporate finance business has been in a better place in terms of deal activity.
“We have been getting a lot of secondary deals, which shows clients coming back to us for more,” he said.
“The pipeline going forward into the first quarter of 2015 looks equally or even more exciting than at this time last year.”
Panmure Gordon’s shares rose by 10.3 per cent on the day to close at a two-month high of 155p.