Foreign & Colonial Asset Management – the UK fund manager acquired by Eureko in 2001 – may be floated on the stock exchange. Eureko is proposing to retain a majority shareholding following the IPO.
“The acquisition of F&C has been a great success for Eureko,” says Gijsbert Swalef, Chairman and CEO of Eureko. “Our clients have benefited from the greater scale and breadth of capabilities, whilst F&C’s profitability has increased significantly despite the declines in global markets in recent years. Our philosophy has been to treat F&C as an autonomous business within the Eureko Group. A listing is therefore a natural and logical next step and we continue to back F&C’s ambitions to build a leading pan-European asset management company. A listing of F&C would also assist in setting a more transparent valuation of Eureko ahead of its own IPO.”
F&C has a presence in the Netherlands, Ireland and Portugal, and a growing presence in Germany and France, as well as its home market of the UK, where its investment management and support operations are centralised. It performs local client servicing activities and the management of certain specialist asset classes in each of the main geographic markets it serves.
At the end of last year, F&C had total assets under management of approximately 90 billion (64 billion) and employed 437 staff. Revenues were approximately 200 million (140 million), two-thirds of which were earned in Continental Europe.
“F&C is one of the few asset management organisations focused on the pan-European marketplace,” says Robert Jenkins, CEO of F&C. “A listed subsidiary is a model which has worked well for other asset managers and is one which should help us take advantage of opportunities to develop the business further for the benefit of our clients, shareholders and employees. It is an exciting prospect and one which the management team fully supports.”
No timetable has yet been set for a listing of F&C, which will be dependent, amongst other things, on market conditions. Lexicon Partners Limited is acting as financial adviser to Eureko.
Eureko is a privately-owned financial services group whose core businesses are primarily insurance and asset management, and which has operations in fifteen European countries, including Achmea in The Netherlands; F&C; Friends First in Ireland; Interamerican Hellenic Life in Greece; Union of Slovakia; Imprio of France, and, with its consortium partner, Bank Millennium SA (formerly Big Bank Gdanski) also has a strategic 31.8% investment in PZU, Polands primary insurer, with an agreement to acquire a further 21% shareholding.
In addition, Eureko and Banco Comercial Portugus (BCP) have a strategic partnership, in particular for the development of joint initiatives in bancassurance and asset management in Poland and Greece. Eureko and BCP each hold a 5% shareholding in the other company.
Eurekos ambitions are to expand its European insurance and asset management activities, increasing its presence in the markets where it is currently active and seeking to enter new markets which fit its investment criteria.