NETHERLANDS - Asset manager Robeco has fully acquired the managed futures trader Transtrend, it announced.

Five years ago, Robeco bought a 49% stake in the Rotterdam-based company. Its assets under management have increased almost tenfold to €2.8bn within this period, it indicated.

Ninety percent of Transtrend's (Luxembourg-based) funds is aimed at professional investors, director Joep van den Broek said.

Robeco didn't disclose the amount of the acquisition.

Transtrend's main investment programme - Enhanced Risk (USD), of its Diversified Trend Program - returned 12.8%, 6% and 12% during the past three years respectively, it said. Its average yearly returns since 1995 are 18%.

The results of the past years were better than we were hoping at the start, Robeco's CEO George Moller said. "The spectacular growth has been caused by Robeco's distribution power, combined with the ever powerful Transtrend engine."

As a consequence of the takeover, Transtrend founder Gerard van Vliet will leave the company as director and shareholder. "Within twenty years after developing Transtrend's concept, the company has grown to proportions I could never have dreamt of," he commented.

According to Van Vliet, Transtrend's secret is gathering and keeping together a talented and motivated team, combined with a very clear focus and philosophy: intelligently and systematically generating investment returns based on trend-related market fluctuations."

Van Vliet will be succeeded as a director by Joep van den Broek and Harold de Boer, who have been working at Transtrend since 1995 and 1989 respectively. Mark van Dongen and Andre Honig will act as co-directors.

Rotterdam-based Robeco offers products and services on discretionary asset management, as well as investment funds - several of which are listed - for a large number of institutional and private investors worldwide. It has offices in five other European countries, the US, Bahrein and Japan.