Everything’s Crystal
Apart from creating Britain’s biggest domestic player in wealth management with AuM of £120 billion, the £2.7 billion acquisition of Evelyn Partners by NatWest will have other ripple effects. For one thing, the boss of the new unit will become, arguably, the most powerful figure in UK wealth management. And Hedgehog is told that, as long as the deal goes through, there is little doubt as to who that person will be: current Coutts boss Emma Crystal.
It’s quite a turnaround for a banker who was the last chief sustainability officer of Credit Suisse – until it failed to sustain itself and collapsed in 2023. Crystal then moved to UBS prior to her appointment by NatWest-owned Coutts, which was announced in February 2025.
It’s not yet clear whether the Evelyn Partners brand will be retained within the new setup. ‘All options are on the table while we conduct the acquisition,’ says my mole. But there is apparently a good deal of optimism about the tie-up: ‘Everyone is genuinely excited about it – it’s a good outcome for both sides.’
[See also: NatWest to buy UK wealth manager Evelyn Partners for £2.7 billion deal]
Long on London
Whisper it, but some in the Square Mile insist there are reasons to be cheerful about London, despite an onslaught of negative news coverage in recent months. Not long ago you might have laughed at the idea of the FTSE 100 at 10,000 but with it passing 10,900 in late February (just before the Iran war sent it sliding), how about 11,000?
‘If we continue to see diversification from the US, with a bit of decent growth here the chances of us getting there in the medium term are pretty good,’ says AJ Bell number cruncher Russ Mould. The FTSE 100 is currently trading at 13-14 times earnings, he notes, below its long-run average of 14-15 times (and still well below dizzying US P-E ratios north of 20).
‘If we get a bit more of an economic and political tailwind going, supported by firmer industrial metals prices and maybe some strength in oil, that could support earnings and dividends,’ he adds, pointing out that in the past year the London stock markets have been a cash machine, returning £180 billion to investors through dividends, buy-backs and mergers and acquisitions.
Each step up in earnings ratios is worth around 7 per cent, Mould adds: ‘Very crudely, if you were to go to 18 you’d be up 35-40 per cent from here.’ Now that would be exciting…
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Pheasant times
It is a truth rarely admitted that pheasant is often more fun to shoot than to eat. Now, however, the humble pheasant is been given a new lease of gastronomic life – by being smoked. Endorsed by leading chefs including Raymond Blanc and Alain Roux, Lady Hamilton of Dalzell, chatelaine of the 8,500-acre Apley Park estate in Shropshire, has begun smoking, dry-curing and sous vide-ing pheasant and selling through outlets including Chatsworth, various posh farm shops and the Bayley & Sage deli chain in London.
‘It’s not about the money,’ Lady H tells Hedgehog. ‘I love pheasant and hate waste.’
The UK exports most of the 40 million pheasants shot each year to places like the Netherlands, but it’s also feared that millions of birds also go unharvested altogether.
‘My dream is to make pheasant widely available and enjoyed by the British public so that shooting becomes a circular economy,’ adds Lady Hamilton, who relaunched her Apley Smoked Pheasant brand last April. In the first year she sold 1,000 packs (priced around £12.99), and she’s aiming for more.
‘The sky’s the limit,’ she says.
[See also: From Gstaad Guy to Supersnake: how social media finally went ultra-high-net-worth]
Insured to thrill
With a protagonist who is the MD of a Lloyd’s of London broker, Conflict is not a run-of-the-mill thriller. For one thing, the identity of the author – who is using the nom de plume Jay Michaelson – is a closely guarded publishing industry secret.
Speaking to Hedgehog under the condition of strict anonymity, the secretive scribe reveals that the story, a whodunnit murder mystery full of dark intrigues, has been ‘inspired by the world of insurance and the Lloyds investor scandal of the 1980s and 1990s. I’ve used my knowledge of how Lloyds worked and the sort of thing that could have happened and given it an imaginative twist.’
However, ‘Michaelson’ adds: ‘Absolutely none of it is true, so I can’t be sued. But it’s very exciting.’
Off to the races
Despite poaching equine banking rainmaker Henry Taylor from the storied Weatherbys Racing Bank (which banked the late Queen Elizabeth II) to head up its new racing division, Arbuthnot Latham is determined not to scare the horses, so to speak.
‘We don’t have to go head-to-head against Weatherbys – there’s plenty of room,’ says Rob Stapledon, head of the media division at Arbuthnot and Taylor’s new boss. ‘They do a really good job and they’re very decent, but there’s lots of opportunities for people in that sector that just maybe are not getting the expertise and that relationship-led approach from the high street.’
Today Milan…
Having opened her ‘first foreign office’ in Milan earlier this year, the self-styled ‘Diva of divorce’, Ayesha Vardag has let slip to Hedgehog her plans to go global.
While the new Milan office, which she tells me has a team of five, including a hot-shot Italian divorce lawyer, will cater for the burgeoning ranks of UHNWs in the northern Italian city, the Vardags team is looking to see where next to plant the corporate flag.
[See also: Introducing Spear’s Magazine: Issue 99]
Vardag, who is said to charge £1,200 an hour, tells me: ‘Milan is obviously the perfect place to start, because Milan is in lots of ways the new London and so many people are moving there.’
So where else is she looking at opening? ‘I can’t tell you where we are planning next, but I can tell you that we do have a vision of broad international expansion,’ says Vardag.
What about Monaco, Switzerland or New York?
‘I would say that they are all good strategic thoughts,’ she purrs. ‘We are going to consider anywhere that high-net-worth individuals congregate and live and need to deal with complex jurisdictional questions and need top-level legal advice.’
This article first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 99. Click here to subscribe
