Scotland continues to attract wealth management firms

Another wealth management boutique looks set to open an Edinburgh office, providing more evidence of the sector's seeming resilience to the financial crisis north of the border.

Ruffer Investment Management, a London-based wealth management boutique, is due to open an office in the Scottish capital and is currently in the process of recruiting a team to support investment director, Hamish Baillie, who is going to lead the new office.

The firm will open the office in September, according a report on Citywire.

There's been a bit of movement in the wealth management space in Scotland in recent months. Kleinwort Benson expanded its Scottish team, Standard Life Wealth hired two portfolio managers towards the tail end of last year, and Brown Shipley has announced its intentions to recruit aggressively over the next 18 months.

Rensburg Sheppards and Williams de Broë also set up Edinburgh offices recently.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily amount to a raft of recruitment, and a lot of these satellite offices will often be manned by just a few people.

However, Richard Fletcher, director of Edinburgh headhunters Fletcher Jones, talks of the resilience of the wealth management sector in Scotland and believes a lot of firms will be growing over the next few months.

"Obviously, there's the need to tap into the high number of wealthy individuals in Scotland and these new firms recruit locally for relationship managers," he says. "However, there's also the added bonus of having a good pool of talented investment managers in Edinburgh so there's a desire to beef up investment teams here as well."

Fletcher also says he knows of "at least one other" wealth manager that will kick-start an Edinburgh office in the next few months.