Close Brothers Group PLC (LON: CBG) (LON:CBG)

Close brothers group PLC is a UK-based merchant financial services group and is aleading British merchant banking group that was founded in 1878. It is headquartered in London and is a part of the FTSE 250 index. It provides financial services like lending, deposit taking, wealth management and securities trading.  It operates through three segments: Banking, Securities and Asset Management. It serves small and medium sized companies, individuals, and financial institutions.

The company’s goal is to provide flexible financial options to its clients. The banking segment helps in providing loans to small businesses and individuals and gives importance to specialist finance. Also, it offers deposit services to businesses and individuals in the UK. The portfolio includes broker finance, aviation and marine, brewery rentals, asset-based lending, commercial vehicles hiring, insurance premium finance, invoice finance, motor finance, property finance, professional services finance, and technology services.

Trading services are provided by the securities segment through market-maker Winterflood, which trades in relevant MTFs and major dark pools and covers nearly all LSE-listed stocks, as well as Alternative Investment Market (AIM), ICAP Securities and Derivatives Exchange. The asset management segments provide a variety of financial services like financial advice, investment management and services for investing online to professional advisors and private clients. 

The company provides a deep knowledge of various sectors across industries and asset classes. It, therefore, claims to provide better lending decisions and faster access to funds when clients need them the most. It uses various sources of funding to diversify its portfolio. The strategy is to focus on specialist businesses in niche markets to build stronger and enduring customer relationships.

The lending is generally secure as it has conservative loan to value ratios with small sizes of loans as well as shorter maturity periods. The business focuses more on quality of returns than overall growth and market share. It fulfils its social, economic as well as environmental responsibilities, to generate sustainable growth opportunities for all its stakeholders. It has high standards of corporate governance and a well-defined business code of conduct which aims at maximising productivity.