On August 1, 2024, BNP Paribas and AXA announced that they entered into exclusive negotiations for the acquisition of AXA Investment Management (AXA IM) and a long-term partnership in asset management. Under the terms of the proposed transaction, AXA will receive overall cash proceeds of €5.4 billion. In addition, AXA and BNP Paribas would also enter into a long-term strategic partnership under which BNP Paribas would provide investment management services to AXA. The signing of the proposed transaction is expected by the end of the year, while the closing of the transaction is expected for mid-2025 after regulatory approval is

Just recently released into production, the StarMine M&A Target Model is the newest predictive model from LSEG StarMine. This model has been designed to predict the likelihood of a publicly traded company becoming the target of a takeover or merger offer. Like all StarMine models, it ranks companies on a 1-100 scale. In the case of this model, companies with high scores are, on average, nine times more likely to become a target than those with low scores (Exhibit 1). The model has two major components: A Fundamental Component and a Text Component. The Fundamental Component uses LSEG content from

On Tuesday, 19 September 2023, ARK Invest LLC (“ARK Invest” or “ARK”), the parent of ARK Investment Management LLC, has acquired Rize ETF for £5.25m. This transaction can be seen as a major step for the global expansion strategy of ARK Invest, as this will enable them to launch UCITS ETFs on an existing ETF platform. This can immediately be distributed across Europe and in other parts of the world (Latin America and Asia), where UCITS is an acknowledged regulatory standard. The Rize ETF platform will be renamed to ARK Invest Europe. From my point of view the deal makes

On March 19, 2023, UBS agreed to buy troubled rival Swiss bank Credit Suisse in a merger which was engineered by Swiss authorities to safeguard the financial markets and to calm down the turmoil in the global banking sector. Assuming that a merger of the two largest Swiss banks will lead to a merger of their fund and ETF management branches raises the question about the impact such a merger would have on the fund management landscape. Therefore, is a topic of interest to see how the merger of the fund and ETF arms of the two banks will impact

September 2022 marked the second month with outflows from ETFs in Europe for 2022 so far. These outflows occurred in a negative and volatile market environment in which investor sentiment was impacted by high inflation rates, increasing interest rates, a market turmoil in UK government bonds, geopolitical tensions, and disrupted delivery chains caused by the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Europe and other parts of the world. The performance of the underlying markets led to decreasing assets under management (from €1,283.5 bn as of August 31, 2022, to €1,203.1 bn at the end of September). In more detail, the decrease

With the announcement of the purchase of NN Investment Partners (NNIP) by Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), we witnessed another remarkable merger between asset managers in Europe after Amundi announced that it will buy Lyxor earlier this year. From my point of view, this kind of corporate action is normal in an industry where size matters. I predict that we will see a number of medium-sized asset managers getting snapped up by larger groups or doing mergers of equals to reach higher levels of assets under management and to secure (exclusive) access to new customer groups via strategic distribution agreements.

On April 7, 2021, Amundi and Lyxor announced that Amundi is in exclusive talks with Société Générale to buy its asset management arm Lyxor for a total cash consideration of €825m. Following these negotiations, the deal was closed on June 11, 2021. Besides serving as a platform for alternative strategies, Lyxor ETF is the main target of this acquisition, since the merger would create the second largest ETF promoter in Europe. Even as there was a rumor going on, the announcement of the possible sale of Lyxor was a bit surprising. This is because Lyxor ETF had just finalized the

The announced merger between Franklin Templeton Investments and Legg Mason follows a series of other takeovers. It shows that the global asset management industry is further in a consolidation mode, even as the overall assets under management increased massively over the last 10 years. The ongoing corporate activity regarding transactions is driven by the increased pressure on fees for active management, which is shrinking the revenues of asset managers. The trend started in the U.S., but has also reached Europe. One reason for the increased pressure on the revenues of asset managers is the fact that they are no longer

Rumor has it that Deutsche Bank may want to offload its asset management unit DWS in case of a possible takeover of its local rival Commerzbank. The thinking is that Deutsche Bank may need the cash from selling its asset management arm to finance the Commerzbank deal. The rumors have led large European asset managers including Allianz Global Investors, Amundi and UBS to announce their interest in DWS. Since we witnessed a lot activity with regard to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the European asset management industry over the past few years, the interest in DWS may not come as

Following the ground-breaking merger of Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life Investments in August 2017, co-CEO of the new entity, Standard Life Aberdeen, Martin Gilbert, gives an update on how the merger has bedded down since then. In this podcast, he discusses how the firm is addressing some of the challenges posed by recent net fund flows and asset retention. He outlines the new partnership with Virgin Money, the relationship with Lloyds Bank and the sort of potential acquisitions the firm might assess in the future. Martin also discusses the challenges posed to the funds industry and what active managers

After selling its European exchange-traded commodity, currency, and short-and-leveraged business to Wisdom Tree Investment, Inc. earlier this week, ETF Securities Limited announced on November 15, 2017, that it also will sell its European ETF platform, known as “Canvas” (including the staff members), to Legal & General Investment Management (Holding) Limited (LGIM) for an undisclosed price. Both parties expect the acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approval, to be finalized in Q1-2018. With regard to the strategy of the Canvas platform, LGIM said in the press release about the acquisition that the platform will remain open architecture for differentiated products and

ETF Securities Limited announced on November 13, 2017 that it will sell its European exchange-traded commodity, currency, and short-and-leveraged business to Wisdom Tree Investment, Inc. for approximately US$611 million. In more detail the business being sold comprises all the European operations (including staff members), excluding GO UCITS ETF Solutions—the ETF platform of ETF Securities. Even though the deal constitutes a definitive agreement, it is still subject to regulatory approval; both parties aim to close the transaction in first quarter 2018. The agreed terms for the deal contain US$253 million in cash and 30 million Wisdom Tree shares. The cash for the transaction is