Bell Potter puts the band back together

When Hugh Robertson invited Colin Bell to lunch at in Melbourne last year, there was something unusual on the menu.

Hugh Robertson, left, and Colin Bell have reuntied. Picture: Aaron Francis

When Hugh Robertson invited Colin Bell to lunch at his favourite Flinders Lane restaurant in Melbourne last year, there was more on the menu than just a bottle or two of fine wine and a few old war stories.

Robertson, an unmistakeable figure among Collin Street’s blue-blood stockbroking fraternity for decades, had a proposition for the big man he had turned his back on four years earlier when he and his star team walked out of Bell Potter’s 101 Collins Street headquarters to join a rival firm.

“I told Colin we wanted to continue doing what we do in an environment where we can be looked after. Where we can deal with who we wish and offer the services we think we are good at offering,’’ Robertson tells The Weekend Australian.

Fast forward a few months and by 4pm yesterday, Robertson and his 10-strong team had informed their bosses at the other end of Collins Street at Wilson HTM that they were heading back into the Bell fold to join the listed Bell Financial Group (BFG).

And they were welcomed with open arms.

“When Hugh left us in 2011, there was no bad blood. He just decided he was sick of me and to have his short-lived affair with Otto (Buttula). It never meant I wouldn’t speak to him again. People like to try other things and that is what he did,’’ says Bell, BFG’s executive chairman.

“No one ever ended up being bitter and twisted — life is too short. Rule No 1 is never burn your bridges. We were disappointed when he left but that doesn’t mean we bad-mouthed him. It is a very small market we are in and it is quite possible to get on very well with competitors.’’

The move reunites the team from one of Melbourne’s oldest broking firms, Falkiners Stockbroking, which carved out a strong position in the small-cap space during the 1990s and was sold to Bell Potter Securities in 2002.

It includes the likes of Vaughan Webber, Matthew Baxter, Athol White and Charles Richardson — all who have worked with Robertson for between 15 and 25 years.

But the union goes beyond just work for Robertson — also in the team are his wife and childhood sweetheart, private client adviser Brigid Robertson, and their son — also named Hugh.

Hugh Robertson senior was one of the few outsiders to be welcomed into the Bell family’s inner sanctum at Bell Potter when he joined the board there in 2005, sitting alongside the Bell brothers, Colin, Lewis and Andrew. The only other outsider was Alastair Provan.

For years Robertson and his family also visited the Bells’ famous Wanganella and Poll Boonoke merino studs in southwestern NSW, part of a 40km stretch of land cut by the Sydney-Adelaide road known to locals as “Bell country”.

Robertson never feared for a moment he would not be welcomed back into the Bell fold despite his mid-2011 defection to Otto Buttula’s InvestorFirst, which 18 months later sold its stockbroking and investment advisory business to Wilson HTM.

“You always know where you stand with the Bells,’’ Robertson says.

“Once you strike a deal with them, you have a deal — and even if they had to cut off their left arm to honour the deal — they would. And conversely if you had to do the same, you would be expected to.’’

Now Robertson and his team want to help enhance Bell Potter’s expertise in the small to mid-cap sector of the market, especially in the agribusiness and food sectors which have become their trademark.

Robertson also has close links with the likes of billionaire investor Alex Waislitz, Ellerston Capital’s Ashok Jacob, Monadelphous chairman John Rubino, Kathmandu founder Jan Cameron and retail king Marc Besen.

He ran the float for Bellamy’s Organic, the glamour stock of the ASX over the past year. “We just want to do more of the same. We have found a good niche for ourselves. It is never going to be at the top end of town — our business is in supporting and nurturing smaller companies,’’ Robertson says of their plans at Bell.

Bell says Robertson and his team have a “good nose’’ for equity capital markets opportunities.

“We know Hugh and his team very well. They are a very powerful unit in that small caps space. People with that amount of firepower we can always make room for, and it doesn’t cut across anything we have been doing.’’

And while he admits he got his timing wrong in the move to InvestorFirst, the most recent financial results of Bell Potter’s parent company — Bell Financial Group — give Robertson some comfort.

Annual pre-tax profit is expected to be up 165 per cent to more than $22 million. Colin Bell is keen to play predator again. “There are a lot of rationalisation opportunities in this sector where the mathematics is compelling, and I am optimistic those will surface.’’