Close Brothers acquires £300m of deposits

21st Feb 2011 14:20

Finance provider Close Brothers has bought the retail structured term deposit book of Dunbar Bank for a premium of £1.5m. The deposits are worth a total of £300m and Dunbar will pay Close £298.5m in cash to take on the deposits. Dunbar is part of the Zurich Financial Services Group. Close is taking on four staff and will take a licence to the use the software systems supporting this business. Close is attracted to the deposits because they provide it with an attractive source of funding. The acquisition should be slightly earnings enhancing for the year to July 2012.