Two of the country’s best known agencies have been united in one over-arching company with revenues of £100m.
The merger is between Romans and Leaders, with 27 and 120 branches respectively, propelling the joint organisation up the league table in terms of largest agencies.
At the same time, the combined group has raised a further £35m to help fund a continuation of the successful buy-and-build strategy employed by both companies, of acquiring quality lettings and estate agency businesses to add to their branch networks.
Joint chief executives of the new company, Property Services Holdings, are Romans’ Peter Coles and Leaders’ Paul Weller.
The new group will have over 40,000 properties under management, as well as sales, new homes, land, planning, surveying, mortgage and auctions arms.
Both firms are already highly acquisitive in their own right and both are individually backed by the same private equity group, Bowmark Capital.
Bowmark backed a £48m MBO of Leaders in 2010. It went on to support a £50m MBO of Romans in 2013.
Both Leaders and Romans are successful and entrepreneurial firms, each starting with just one branch.
With a total of 147 branches as of now, each firm will retain its own autonomous identity, and Coles and Weller remain in charge of their respective firms.
Leaders, which has not gone down the franchising route, has expanded almost entirely by acquisition and has country-wide presence. Founded as a lettings business, it has recently ventured into sales, but the large bulk of its business remains in lettings.
Romans has stayed close to its Thames Valley roots and has built a highly successful, multi-faceted business.
Coles said: “With Bowmark’s backing, Romans has continued to expand across the south-east.
“The merger with Leaders gives us access to a national platform and deep buy-and-build expertise, and will create new opportunities for both businesses as we enter the next phase of growth.”
Bowmark partner Mark Salter said: “Leaders and Romans are outstanding businesses in their own right, and both have delivered impressive profit growth under Bowmark’s ownership.
“Bringing them together creates a leading lettings-focused property services group that is greater than the sum of the parts, and is perfectly positioned to capitalise on the positive market conditions.”
Weller said: “This is an exciting next step in the Leaders story since we forged our successful partnership with Bowmark in 2010. We are looking forward to sharing expertise with Romans to take fullest advantage of the expected growth in residential sales and lettings in the UK.”
Geographically, there is little overlap between the two firms, but Weller yesterday told EYE that where there is “there might be some co-branding”.
He said that the idea was for the firms to expand together, pooling their expertise.
With private equity backers normally looking for a profitable exit, a stock market flotation – certainly speculated in the case of Romans – could now be on the cards, given that the scale of the merged business would make it too expensive for a trade sale.
Congratulations to everyone there. Epic merger there. There’s some great people involved and wish them all the best.
Keep saying it the real story of the market right now around disruption has little to do with the online agents but is all about the mergers and acquisitions piece that’s changing the face of the industry.
Its changing the face of the market and will be fascinating to see how it pans out.
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I don’t disagree Mr Whale but someone needs to be looking after the smaller agents in all this. Over half the industry is sat alone in a difficult and competitive industry with the market and government against them. The playing field needs to be levelled up!
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Market forces will do that for you…survival of the fittest. All the big stories are off the back of what have been easier markets for a few years, mergers/IPO/expansion, lets see where we are in 1 year! The reality is most areas have an over supply of agents and the big groups are loading up costs and mouths to feed. Lets see what happens when the market tightens up. The top end of the market in London is already feeling the squeeze…..and that ripple will spread. The bottom of the market will face a challenge from the beginning of next month when the Stamp Duty regime changes. I wonder how many of those investment grade sales that don’t exchange in time will remain under offer. I for 1 am watching…as I have a long memory and remember what happened to the market after 1/1/88. That date will confuse some….others will be reminded that property goes roughly in 7 year cycles.
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Miras day was in August of that year and I worked the coal face of agency through that dark period till 94 so know all about market forces. It is that experience that drives my motivation that the corporate economies of scale savings should be available to all agents; a £1050/branch saving on portal fees per month would make a significant difference to many smaller and medium size firms.
There is an artificial squeeze on agents, bbut that the squeeze is felt more by agents who play the game by the rules and stand by the code of conduct of their governing body. Honesty, integrity and professionalism is expensive so something has to be done to offset those worthy but expensive restraints.
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Leadans? Romers? Romanders? Lead Roman? Romanlea?
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So – the question beckons…
WHO will win the Cartus Cup this year?
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The question for me is WHO would dislike that comment and for what reason?!!
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An easy one to answer, RealAgent.
I have a faithful Plank – he/she never lets me down in the ‘Dislike’ department.
It’s nice to know I have a following… even one that cannot string a single sentence of debate together.
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I must have a similar, if not slightly smaller one then…..err faithful plank I hasten to add.
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There – see what I mean.
I would say that he really needs to get a grip – but I’m fairly sure there’s no doubt that is already well and truly taken care of…
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You’re getting ‘Dislikes’ for a different reason, RealAgent.
You are forgetting the capital ‘P’ when you type ‘Plank’.
It’s disrespectful to type someone’s name or title in lowercase.
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Realised there is no “undislike” button when you press it by accident so I appear to dislike by mistake! My apologies!
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How many golf courses are responsible for estate agents merging, property developers trading, FSA financing ?
My handicap is I don’t like golf !
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1 dislike ?
Whats to dislike?
So I don’t play golf, I don’t like it !
And ???
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Caeser’s – Roman leaders. 🙂
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The product of a brilliant mind! You just won the whole internet!
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To be fair that was very good.
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Ooops – Make that ‘Caesar’s’
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Informy Informy – they all have it In for me…
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You may be closer than you think, the name of the trading company for Romans is Imperial Estate Agents Ltd.
Still it is another sign of how difficult it will become for new players to enter the market with large corporates such as Romans/Leaders, LSL, Connells and Countrywide buying up everything not nailed down.
Its great because the unconditional offers I get sent just keep getting bigger and bigger (that’s without seeing my accounts either) but eventually there will be a point where they will have to increase turnover purely on business performance and while Romans has been very good with that with lots of cold starts Leaders has always been more of a buyer and may hit a brick wall eventually.
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Jeeze……first Romans need to pay their current employees worthy wages, as I know many people work there don’t even get a penny worth of yearly increment! cant believe! At least think about yearly cost of living rise? no way with Romans..
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