Lloyds veteran David Lawrence has been named chief executive of Kingswood Holdings three years after taking on a similar role for the UK arm.
He succeeds Gary Wilder, who is stepping down after three years to take up a non-executive position with the discretionary fund manager. Wilder said he will “continue to have oversight of Kingswood US, though this will continue to be very capably led by Mike Nessim”.
Chairman David Hudd described Lawrence’s leadership of Kingswood UK as “transformative”, adding “we are confident David will take the business to another level over the coming years, fully realising its potential”.
He expressed his gratitude to Wilder for “having the vision for what Kingswood can become both domestically and internationally”.
It is the third time in just over two years that the DFM’s leadership team has undergone significant change.
In July 2021, our sister publication Portfolio Adviser reported that CFO Patrick Goulding was to leave and chairman Kenneth “Buzz” West was retiring. It followed raids on Charles Stanley, Close Brothers and St James’s Place in March 2020 to fill out its senior ranks.
The DFM has been on an acquisition spree over the past few years, with inorganic growth the primary driver behind its rapid expansion.
In February, International Adviser reported that Kingswood had already made four acquisitions in 2022 and had “a strong pipeline of high-quality UK opportunities under negotiation”.
“Our next near-term target is to build our AUA/M to in excess of £10bn in the UK and £14bn ($18.4bn, €16.7bn) globally and we have the balance sheet to do so,” Lawrence said at the time.
UK boards bolstered as well
In a further change, the wealth management group named Richard Avery-Wright to the boards of its UK regulated subsidiaries KW Wealth Planning and KW Investment Management.
Avery-Wright’s career spans more than three decades, having started on the floor of the London Stock Exchange acting as a trainee stockbroker in 1985. For the following 22 years, he worked for a number of firms, including Man Group and Old Mutual, both in the UK and in Australia.
In 2007, Avery-Wright co-founded Pie Funds Management in New Zealand before settling in Guernsey in 2012, where he established RCP Holdings, which has co-founded or has made investments in a range of businesses including, Raw Capital Partners, Castle Point Funds Management, Wealthify and MyPinPad.
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