Astaire buys Ruegg for £0.6m

23/07/2009 Robert Tyerman

Acquisitive if battle-scarred broking and investment house Astaire Group has bought corporate adviser Ruegg for a likely £649,000.

AIM-quoted Astaire, until recently called Blue Oar and before that Corporate Synergy, is paying £315,000 in shares for Ruegg, recently named PLUS market Adviser of the Year in the Growth Company Awards, and a further cash sum of up to £334,000 for assets in excess of £25,000. Ruegg, which originally had a white Zimbabwean flavour to it and has several mining groups among its wide range of smaller company clients, made £131,000 pre-tax last year and ended 2008 with investments, cash and other assets of £187,000.

Brett Miller, Ruegg’s managing director, says the company is ‘delighted’ at the deal, which ‘provides a large and stable platform for a wider range of services than we have been able to offer hitherto’. Astaire boss Edward Vandyk is similarly complementary about Ruegg.

Astaire, which is also in the process of acquiring fellow investment concern Dowgate Capital and was recently fined £226,000 by the London Stock Exchange over its role in 2006 as AIM nominated adviser to the Worthington Nicholls group, has recently undergone significant restructurings of its own. These involved the departure of Blue Oar founder Andrew Monk and the installation of Vandyk.

Astaire shares, which have fluctuated between 13p and 3.25p over the past year, now stand at 6p. That values the company at £10.7 million.