The combination of both businesses will establish UK/French structured products boutique as a top five distributor in the UK market.

Hilbert Investment Solutions has acquired UK structured products distributor Tempo Structured Products for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition of Tempo represents a step forward for the combined business to position Hilbert as the leading provider of structured products in the UK - Steve Lamarque, Hilbert

As part of the acquisition, the senior staff at Tempo Structured Products will transfer to Hilbert Investment Solutions, with Chris Taylor, CEO at Tempo, taking the role of managing director of the UK business and Christopher Hale, Tempo's national business development director taking the same role at Hilbert.

Taylor and Hale will join Hilbert's team including Dasale Mallawa-Arachi, head of UK distribution, Adam Turner, senior business development manager, structured products, and Boumediene Boutelaa, head of institutional sales.

"The acquisition of Tempo represents a step forward for the combined business to position Hilbert as the leading provider of structured products in the UK,  we will be able to leverage Tempo’s market knowledge and reach to get to the next level of development, by combining Hilbert’s core skills within custody, pension, models portfolio," Steve Lamarque (pictured), CEO and founding partner at Hilbert Investment Solutions, told SRP. "Tempo’s products will also add scope and variety to our offering."

We look forward to ongoing contact with professional advisers, focusing on a client-centric, bar-raising best practice approach to structured products - Chris Taylor, Tempo Structured Products

According to Lamarque, Tempo's reputation is widely recognised for its "acute and bar-raising focus on client centric, best practice governance, working closely with professional advisers in the UK, providing research and educational support alongside innovative products". 

"We look forward to ongoing contact with professional advisers, focusing on a client-centric, bar-raising best practice approach to structured products, also bringing innovative pension and model portfolio services to the UK," Taylor (right) told SRP.

"We will combine the best aspects of Tempo with the best aspects of Hilbert, including its good bank relationships, also strong research and product development capabilities, and notably very strong in-house plan administration and custody, 'Infinity', with BoNYM as custody provider. We will strengthen what we do together to achieve steady growth and scale over time."

Market activity

Tempo Structured Products has over 270 live products in the UK market worth an estimated US$427 million – most of the products and sales are linked to the FTSE 100 Equal Weight Fixed Dividend Custom Index (250 products/US$372m) which was introduced in the retail market by the UK distributor in 2018, as well as to the FTSE 100 and the interest rate, SRP data shows.

Most of the products sold by Hilbert have been issued by Citi (45 products/US$121m) and Goldman Sachs (four products/US$14m).

Tempo's preferred issuer since its launch has been Société Générale although the distributor has live products in the market issued by RBC and Morgan Stanley. Tempo was the fifth most active distributor of structured products in the UK in 2023 with more than 70 products marketed worth an estimated US$121m or 5.4% market share.

Hilbert, on the other hand, has a smaller range of live products in the UK market (50 products/US$137m) but a wider variety of underlying exposures including market cap and custom indices such as the FTSE 100 Equally Weighted 45 Point Decrement Index (27 products /US$70.27m) and FTSE International Consolidated Air 4.52% Decrement Index (three products/US$5.08 m) as well as market cap indices such as the FTSE 100 and Eurostoxx 50, and baskets of stocks.

Launched in 2012 in Paris, advisory and financial engineering firm Hilbert Investment Solutions, entered the UK market in 2015 led by former Old Mutual executive, Lamarque.

Tempo Structured Products launched in 2018 as an intermediary firm serving retail and institutional propositions targeted at UK professional advisors and wealth managers. Taylor, its founder, is a structured products veteran with more than 20 years in the industry – he was global head of structured products at HSBC Asset Management when he left the UK bank after ten years to launch Blue Sky Asset Management which was then sold to Incapital Europe in 2010.

Taylor also launched The Investment Bridge, an independent and privately owned consultancy firm dedicated to structured products in 2011.

Hilbert has been on expanding mode since the end of 2023 when turned its attention to the retirement space which led to a partnership with asset manager BlackRock and tech provider for retirement products Quantessence to launch a new pension product linked to a portfolio of ETFs earlier this year.

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