The two parties behind the Rabo Olsen Global Overlay Strategies have decided to go their separate ways after less than a year of operations providing currency overlay and other services from its Utrecht base.

Major Dutch financial group Rabobank, one of the joint backers of the venture, says it will continue providing investment management to clients with currency overlay and other management services on an ad hoc basis to fit in with the needs of their portfolios.

The managing director of Rabo Olsen, Haijo Dijkstra is to stay on with the banking group, partly to look after the needs of the overlay managers' existing customer base.

Olsen & Associates- a supplier of financial technology and databases -continues in this business. It had provided the quantitative trading strategies for the joint venture.

Dijkstra says: Strategies to protect the value of portfolios are required by customers and is a big business. Rabobank will stay in this business as will Olsen, but each in their own way.""