Ludlow Trust is an independent trust company, backed by the Wickers and Sarikhani families, with three former senior Barclays executives on the board.

Ludlow Trust yesterday said that it has concluded the acquisition of the NatWest Group and Coutts UK trust business, which will now be relaunched under the Ludlow Trust banner.

Ludlow Trust is an independent trust company, backed by the Wickers and Sarikhani families, with three former senior Barclays executives on the board.

Under terms of the deal, Ludlow Trust will have non-exclusive access to NatWest Group clients to help grow future business. The company will continue to operate from its bases in London and Bristol, with all staff being retained. It said “substantial” new capital will be injected to improve administration systems and offices.

The owners said that they intend to create a new “international trust group” in the long term.

The management team:

Ali Sarikhani - chairman
A chartered accountant who trained with what is now EY (Ernst & Young), Sarikhani has founded several businesses including Chiltern Group, Kinetic Partners and the ZEDRA Group. 

Matthew Wickers - chief executive
Wickers was chief operating officer of the Intertrust group and a main board member of Vistra after helping to establish it from its initial base in Jersey. 

Gary Collins - chief operating officer
Most recently, he spent two years as the MD of ZEDRA Trust Company UK following the acquisition by the Sarikhani family from Barclays in 2017. 

Walter Coxon - director, head of strategy and development
Former MD and head of Barclays’ global trust business, Coxon has extensive experience in trust and fiduciary management. Prior to being the head of trusts, he was head of strategy for Barclays Wealth and also the COO for wealth advisory. Most recently he was the COO of Barclays Investment Solutions Ltd until March last year, when he left Barclays.

John Dennis - director, corporate development lead
As a graduate Dennis joined Accenture as a strategy consultant in the financial services practice and subsequently moved to Barclays to join the corporate development team, where he spent more than 13 years as a principal corporate financier, leading the coverage for the wealth management division before becoming global head of Barclays Corporate Development in late 2018. Dennis is now MD at Hambleden Capital, the investment arm of the Sarikhani Family.