It looks like the NCB brand will be no more over the coming months. The stockbroking firm, originally set up by Dermot Desmond in 1981, is now owned by South African player, Investec.
It will soon begin moving from its long-standing base in the IFSC to join its parent in Harcourt Street, a shift due to be finished by August. As part of the integration, a spokesman confirmed that NCB will be rebranded as Investec.
Investec bought NCB in January 2012 for €32 million. The Quinn group owned 25 per cent of the business. The balance was held by 60 individual shareholders and employees, including the executives who led the management buy-out of the company from Ulster Bank in 2003: Conor O'Kelly, Graham O'Brien, Liam Booth, Greg Dilger and Tommy Conway.
The brand has seen a fair amount of change – and generated a few headlines – since Desmond set it up. Ulster bought it in 1994 at a time when brokers were aligning themselves to bigger institutions, but sold it nine years later as part of a disposal of non-core operations.
The founder, through his other firm, International Investment and Underwriting, bought back in to support the management buy out and subsequently sold that interest to Quinn.
NCB’s latest move is part of an expansion of Investec’s operation here. The firm is taking an extra two floors in Harcourt Street and, along with NCB staff, 10 London-based employees will come over to “strengthen its corporate lending operation” here.
The last available figures show that NCB had €1.3 billion under management at the end of November 2011.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/VR3765MFOBH2NMV2QNICYDF67M.png)