French asset manager Amundi has acquired a majority stake in Kleinwort Benson Investors (KBI), months after the manager’s parent company was acquired by Oddo & Cie.
KBI’s management team will acquire a 12.5% stake in the company, with the remaining stake owned by Amundi.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
The BHF Kleinwort Benson Group (BHF KB) subsidiary is based in Dublin and operates two offices in the US – in Boston and New York, respectively.
Yves Perrier, Amundi’s chief executive, noted the acquisition was in line with its desire to grow assets under management, announced after its IPO.
Amundi has previously spoken of a desire to reach €1trn in assets under management by the end of 2016.
Acquiring KBI will add €7.6bn in assets to Amundi’s €987bn.
Discussing the deal, Perrier said: “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.”
Sean Hawkshaw, chief executive at KBI, praised its “highly regarded” new owner.
“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,” he said.
As part of the deal, Amundi and Oddo & Cie have agreed to cooperate on the cross-selling of products.
The deal comes only a few weeks after Oddo & Cie finalised the acquisition of BHF KB.
Oddo de-listed BHF KB from the Brussels stock exchange in mid-March.
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