After a strong 16 months in the wake of Covid, St James’s Place (SJP) shares have marked time since August despite upbeat half-year and nine-month bulletins. That is puzzling as the firm, a franchised wealth manager with 4,500 partner-advisers, has benefited from the lockdowns and the effects have not yet been fully realised. The shares perked up yesterday, possibly stimulated by the Omicron scare.
The business began in 1991 as J Rothschild Assurance, led by Sir Mark Weinberg, Lord Rothschild and Michael Wilson. It was soon described as driven by “thrusting young salesmen whose techniques are more akin to those of double glazing sales people”, an image it has never entirely shaken off.
In 2019 SJP, Britain’s biggest wealth manager, was criticised for awarding its
