Amundi to acquire Kleinwort Benson Investors
Paris-headquartered Amundi has announced an agreement to acquire an 87.5% stake in Kleinwort Benson Investors (KBI) from Oddo & Cie.
The remaining 12.5% will be acquired by the management team of KBI.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close during Q3 2016.
KBI which is a branch of BHF Kleinwort Benson Group that was recently acquired by the Oddo group, is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland with offices in Boston and New York and employing 62 people.
Its had €7.6bn of assets under management as of 31 March 2016, mainly across global equity capabilities.
In detail, North America forms 52% of the firm’s AUM by client domicile while Ireland and UK account together for 26%, Continental Europe 14% and Asia 8%.
In a joint press release, both companies said KBI will retain its distribution, operating and portfolio management autonomy.
Sean Hawkshaw will therefore continue as chief executive officer and Noel O’Halloran as chief investment officer.
The deal will comply with Amundi’s target of an expected return on investment superior to 10% within three years.
Through the transaction, Amundi and Oddo & Cie will strengthen their cooperation, namely via the cross selling of their investment expertise.
Yves Perrier, CEO of Amundi said: “We are very pleased to add KBI as a new platform within Amundi Group. This acquisition is perfectly in line with Amundi’s strategy presented at the time of our recent IPO. It will strengthen our offer with a complementary and well-performing equity expertise, that will benefit our clients in Europe, Asia and the Middle-East.”
KBI’S CEO Sean Hawkshaw commented: ‘’Amundi is a highly regarded pure play asset manager and will be a solid long term partner for KBI. We are very excited about this next step in our growth.
“We believe that the combination of Amundi as a majority shareholder and a meaningful stake held by key employees offers an ideal ownership structure to continue to develop the firm while allowing us to deliver the best possible investment returns and service for our clients globally.’’
