Singer out of race for Guinness Mahon

SINGER & Friedlander, the UK investment bank, has pulled out of the race to buy Guinness Mahon, the investment bank put up for sale by the Bank of Yokohama, its Japanese parent, last month.

Singer & Friedlander had been tipped as a leading contender for Guinness Mahon, one of the oldest names in British investment banking.

Yesterday it appeared that Guinness Mahon - which has had a presence in London since the 1870s - would remain under foreign ownership. A leading South African bank, possibly Investec or Nedcor, is rumoured to be the prime contender.

Sources close to the talks said that further bidders could still emerge as Guinness Mahon has yet to complete a series of roadshows to potential buyers. The Guinness Mahon group is unlikely to be broken up prior to the sale, the sources added.

At the time of the sale announcement, Guinness Mahon executives expressed a desire to keep the group together.

As well as the Guinness Mahon investment bank, the Guinness Mahon group owns Henderson Crosthwaite, the City broker, and 44 per cent of Guinness Flight Hambro Asset Management, a joint venture with Hambros, a rival bank.

The Guinness Mahon sale process could be wrapped up in less than four weeks, sources said yesterday, and the banking group is expected to fetch between pounds 75m and pounds 100m.

Guinness Mahon was put up for sale after the Bank of Yokohama (BoY), which took control of the UK bank in 1991, decided to focus on its domestic business after a strategic review.

BoY is said to have injected more than pounds 200m into Guinness Mahon after the bank ran into difficulties in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. But a combination of the BoY funds and the stewardship of David Potter, the bank's chief executive, managed to restore the financial health of the bank.