This morning Close Brothers announced it was selling its wealth management arm - Close Brothers Asset Management - to private equity firm Oaktree.

We had a chat earlier today with the chief executive of CBAM, Eddy Reynolds, about what he feels the additional financial firepower of private equity ownership will allow him to achieve.

As far as Reynolds is concerned, he sees the sale as a vote of confidence by Oaktree in CBAM's existing management and strategy, so the key benefit will be the ability to execute that much more quickly and effectively, which includes acquisitions of financial advice businesses.

He said: "If you are in a larger corporate structure, you have various committees and so on but going forward the decision making body will be the CBAM board so we will be able to execute our strategy more effectively.

Reynolds said he was "hugely excited" by the ability to "push forward our plans at pace".

He said he did not see a particular area where the CBAM proposition is seriously lacking, so the deal is unlikely to result in major changes here.

Reynolds said: "We run funds, we have our own platform, so in terms of the key elements of the vertical stack, it is all there. There is maybe some stuff at the margin we need to do, like maybe Junior Isas."

CBAM, which will be rebranded within the next 18 months, is notable among the allocators we cover for preferring a funds approach as opposed to an MPS approach towards its multi-asset offering and Reynolds said this was unlikely to change for business reasons as well as investment ones.

He said: "From an investment point of view, within a fund structure you are able to buy more things and trade more easily but from a business point of view, it is also more effective because if you make a change once it is reflected across everyone's portfolios."