The boutique UK private bank is in the M&A frame after its parent talked about a need to review its future. Purported bidders for the firm have declined to comment.

The future of Duncan Lawrie, the boutique private bank, has been thrown up in the air after its parent firm Camellia, a UK-listed company, said it is reviewing what to do with the bank after it had endured a “difficult year”.

One media report said that Close Brothers and Rathbone Brothers, two medium-sized players in the UK wealth space, were potential bidders for Duncan Lawrie; both firms declined to comment on the matter.

In its annual report on 23 April, Camellia, which is listed on London’s Alternative Investment Market, said: “Duncan Lawrie Private Bank has had a difficult year coping with the twin challenges of very low interest rates and the conservative risk profile required by the group.”

If Duncan Lawrie, which like other relatively small banks faces a world of rising regulation, is sold off, it will represent another case of mid-level merger and acquisition activity in the European private banking space.

“This conservative approach to risk has long been a cornerstone of the group’s policy at Duncan Lawrie, but with the low interest rate environment potentially extending into the medium term, the group is now reviewing its options with regard to the ongoing development of Duncan Lawrie,” Camellia’s statement continued.

Duncan Lawrie, which has a history dating back to the mid-19th Century, sits alongside other, sharply contrasting business holdings of Camellia: engineering, horticulture and agriculture, and food storage.

The statement said that for the Camellia group as a whole, “headline profit before tax” for the year to 31 December 2014 amounted to £17.23 million ($27 million) compared with £38.15 million in the previous year. Profit before taxation included an amount of £8.82 million (2013: £21.09 million) arising from changes in the fair value of biological assets.

After taking account of exceptional and other one off items the profits before tax for the year to 31 December 2014 amounted to £21.98 million compared with £59.65 million in the previous year. The firm described this as a “particularly disappointing result, reasons for which may be briefly summarised as very poor tea sales prices in Kenya, substantial losses associated with two onerous contracts at AKD, the ever increasing costs of regulation and compliance at Duncan Lawrie and an exceptional provision against an investment in Bermuda".