IBI Corporate Finance has agreed to take a 50pc stake Broker Exchange Ireland (BXI), a mergers and acquisitions firm specialising in the independent broker sector.

It is the first acquisition for IBI, an advisor on some of Ireland’s biggest corporate deals, since management bought out the company from Bank of Ireland in 2017.

The deal represents a move for IBI into an active area for consolidation in recent years as small financial firms have sought greater scale to deal with increased compliance costs.

BXI advises on financial brokers, which can often be sole traders, looking to sell their businesses to larger firms or merge them with other small players.

“Regulatory and compliance costs are increasing significantly, many smaller brokers with owner-managers are looking to exit the market and you have a new generation of Irish and international players looking to bring various parties together to increase market share and leverage greater economies of scale,” said IBI chief executive Tom Godfrey.

“We believe there will be a significant volume of transactions in this sector over the rest of the decade.”

BXI was founded just two years ago by financial industry veteran Shay Keane and has a small team of three.

Mr Keane has sold two companies before: Le Chéile, a credit union advisory firm, and PSL Consulting, a pensions advisory company that was bought by IFG.

This year has been busy for IBI, with several high-profile deals.

The firm advised Bank of Ireland on its acquisition of Davy Group and is also handling the bank’s proposed purchase of KBC Bank Ireland’s consumer banking business, which is being reviewed by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

IBI also acted for Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp on its sale to Germany’s Bauer Media Group, ending Mr O’Brien’s involvement in Irish broadcast media.

The firm has also been adding new talent with the recent appointments of Liam Kiely from Cantor Fitzgerald as a director and head of technology and healthcare and James Doody as a director and head of growth capital.