Old Mutual Asset Managers, The Standard Bank of South Africa and The Bank of New York announced today that they are entering into exclusive negotiations to establish a new South African based joint venture investment administration company.
The three partners will go through a process of exclusive negotiations until the end of 2004, when more detail on the proposition to administration clients will be announced. The potential partners are fully committed to transformation and meeting the Financial Sector Charter requirements.
Assuming successful conclusion of the negotiations, OMAM will outsource its investment administration to the new joint venture, and the OMAM operations team will form the nucleus of the new company. “From an asset management perspective, this will leave the rest of OMAM business focused purely on the generation of investment performance, which we believe will enable us to deliver even better results to our clients,” commented Peter Linley, Chief Investment Officer of OMAM. The new joint venture will target local and offshore asset managers, as well as institutional investors, and initially aims to provide full reporting, fund accounting and investment administration services to this client base.
This strategic move comes at a time when asset managers globally are looking to re-focus their businesses on their core investment activities and outsource administration. Henk Beets, Chief Operating Officer of OMAM, said: “Attracting administration activities from the foreign market into this new operation allows offshore companies to benefit from our lower cost base and excellent pool of expertise, while bringing revenue into the country. This makes strategic business sense from both sides, as well as benefiting South Africa.”