As prefaced yesterday in WealthBriefing, London-listed Evolution Group is to acquire the investment management team of Singer and Friedlander Investment Management, after reaching an agreement with the administrators of Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander.

The acquisition will be made through Evolution’s private client subsidiary Williams de Broe which will take KSF’s assets under management onto its platform. The team will be located in London.

Terms of the agreement were not announced.

Several other investment management groups and UK bank Lloyds TSB were thought to have been interested in Singers.

Alex Snow, group chief executive of Evolution and chief executive of Williams de Broe said:

"We look forward to welcoming the team from Singer and Friedlander and their existing clients for whom we will continue to provide a professional and bespoke investment management service.

"Williams de Broe and Evolution Group Plc remain extremely well capitalised. We have deliberately structured the group to have a strong and highly liquid balance sheet. This combined with no debt supports our aim of becoming a custodian of choice for clients and counterparties during these turbulent market conditions.

"This agreement, together with the recent opening of our Edinburgh office, where we continue to see significant inflows of new clients, demonstrates our previously stated commitment to continue to grow assets under management substantially in the medium term."

But key members of SFIM staff have already left the organisation. Amongst them, Robert Walker, Paula Forecast, Phil Gent and Oliver Pearson-Lund will join Jupiter between November 2008 and January 2009.

Williams de Broe has offices in Bath, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Exeter, Guildford and London.