Cordea Savills buying SEB Asset Management AG

Interesting acquisition in the German asset management (real estate) sector. The British Cordea Savills is set to buy the German SEB Asset Management AG, owned by swedisch SEB who seems to further withdraw itself from the German market.

Temenos acquires Multifonds

Seems the market for software vendors continues to shrink. This is another heads turning acquisition, not long after SS&C bought Advent, although a magnitude smaller.

BearingPoint acquires risk management and reporting specialist RiValue

Interesting acquisition of a data technology platform for risk management and the respective reporting called RiValue. It has come a long way: formerly it has been a part of Value & Risk. BearingPoint seems to further evolve as a regulatory reporting system platform, complementing its services fueled primarily by its product ABACUS.

Buy-Side Technology Awards 2013: The Winners

This year's winners are out, with a few new names and some "surprises". Good to see that the number of categories did not increase once again (currently at 28). In case you are interested to compare to previous years, these are the results for 2012 and 2011.

BNP Paribas Completes Acquisition of Commerzbank Depotbank

Now that the deal is completed the usual mechanisms kick in: amongst them is the consolidating of IT infrastructure and systems. With it the already expressed challenge - and there is no shortcut.

Asset Control has a new owner

Interesting deal by Marline Equity that leaves me a tad bit puzzled in terms of synergy gains: the owner of a potpourri of systems and service providers outside the financial world buys one of the top reference data management systems, Asset Control. Looks a bit like Sungard to me.

BNP Paribas Buys Commerzbank's Depotbank Business

This deal was "in the air" for quite some time and several tries have been rumored. Other articles have named this deal the kick-off for the long awaited shrinking of the depotbank market in Germany. I am not sure that it would make the market pick up the pace in that regard.

The article uses a nice definition for depotbank: "Depotbank is a German term referring to a custodian carrying out clearing, custody and trustee services", a discrimination rather unknown in the anglo-saxon dominated world.

One challenge in carrying out this deal could be the IT infrastructure that the depotbank uses jointly with the core custody business or its outsource partners and that could require a major investment if the business is not completely migrated over to the BNP systems.

Dexia fund arm sale suffers setback

The acquisition of Dexia Asset Management by private equity firm GCS Capital seems to stumble says Ignite. This looks like a déjà vu: Deutsche Bank wasn't able to sell its fund admin arm to Guggenheim. Other deals did materialize, e.g.: BlackRock acquired Credit Suisse’s ETF business and Orix Corporation closed on Robeco, Rabobank's fund business.

Hauck & Aufhäuser to sell Lux private client ops

Yet another sale for Hauck & Aufhäuser. After selling its stake in Universal Investment, Hauck & Aufhäuser is now unhooking its private clients operations in Luxembourg.

Deka und LBB fusionieren doch nicht

Nun also doch nicht! Einzelne Bereiche dagegen schon. Ob damit die KAG gemeint ist scheint noch unklar zu sein. Sollte es dazu kommen, würde möglicherweise die Fonds-Plattform Xentis, die die LBBi im Einsatz hat, zugunsten der auf SimCorp basierenden Plattform der Dealis zur Disposition stehen. Das wäre dann innerhalb kurzer Zeit schon die zweite KAG: die Oppenheim KAG dürfte sich nach den neuerlichen Veränderungen hier in einer ähnlichen Diskussion befinden.

Generell ist das ein vorhersehbarer Trend gewesen - die Anzahl der KAGen sinken, mithin die Anzahl der Fonds-Plattformen, die die Hersteller bei ihren Kunden halten können. Möglicherweise folgt dieser Entwicklung auch eine Konsolidierung der Anbieter?

Dexia agrees sale of fund unit for €380m

Finally Dexia has sold its asset management arm although for much less than originally indicated. The buyer, GCS Capital, interestingly is tightly linked to Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (“ICBC”), so GCS' own press release. ICBC has quite a history and has been looking to tap into various acquisition opportunities throughout recent years not only in Europe.

Seems major acquisitions of asset management units are still possible in Western Europe; possibly a relief for those who tried and failed over the last two years...

The 2012 FinTech 100 Ranking

The yearly ranking of companies who sell software, hardware and IT services to financial institutions. Although very interesting and including the vendors of the asset management software application market, the definition of this ranking is a bit too broad. E.g. it includes Tata, Diebold and others that I would not consider to part of that market.

Dealis: Franke übernimmt von Trageiser

Die Dealis verzeichnet einen Wechsel in der Geschäftsführung: Bernd Franke übernimmt von Roman G. Trageiser. In dem Bericht der Portfolio Institutionell heißt es: "Auch Franke ist im Administrations-Business ein alter Bekannter. In seiner langjährigen Tätigkeit für den HSBC-Konzern positionierte er unter anderem die Inka als Master-KAG.". Möchte das Blatt womöglich auf eine Neuausrichtung der Strategie hinweisen?

Bloomberg LP Moves Into EDM Market, Acquires PolarLake

That's the second acquisition in the product vendor market in the last few weeks - CADIS has been baucht by Markit just recently. I wonder if there is a strategic advantage for the bigger players adding a reference data system to the product portfolio and even more so: why this is happening just now.

Barrington: The Global PA Report 2012

Yet another Barrington report on fund accounting systems ("Portfolio Accounting"is the preferred term there and explicitly used as a synonym). With Germany and Switzerland (2 out of 10 named countries that should cover the entire planet) one would expect that the systems with a significant footprint in German speaking countries would be included. However, I wasn't able to find neither Profidata nor Diamos (MultiFonds, SimCorp and Sungard are included). The majority of the systems seem to be from North America.

Interestingly, vendors like Murex (MX 3), Temenos (WealthManager) and Thomson Reuters (Portia) are included.

Nevertheless an extensive report and a must-have for anyone in the business.

Deutsche Bank: Milliardendeal geplatzt

Guggenheim hat kein Interesse mehr am Kauf großer Teile des Asset Managements der Deutschen Bank.

Markit to acquire enterprise data management specialist Cadis

One of the data management system vendors being more successful lately has just been acquired: CADIS by Markit. Its innovative approach of managing data has made it win several awards, despite being a young company (founded in 2007). It will be interesting to monitor the impact of this deal in the reference data systems market.

Credit Suisse fund COO quits

Dr. Lohmann's resignation as the CEO of its asset management may be interesting, as Credit Suisse sold its German KAG to SGSS in July 2010.

Thorsten Junike wechselt zu Alpheus

Thorsten Junike wird ab 1. April 2012 Geschäftsführer bei Alpheus (bisher Vorstand bei Diamos) und für das Geschäftsfeld mit Kapitalanlagegesellschaften, Asset Managern und Depotbanken verantwortlich zeichnen.

Sparkasse Oberösterreich entscheidet sich für e-AMIS

e-Amis, das Wealth-Management-System der Profidata, hat einen neuen Kunden: die Sparkasse Oberösterreich.

Macquarie bietet für Dt.-Bank-Vermögensverwaltung

Nachdem die JP Morgan aus dem Bieterkreis offenbar ausgeschieden ist, ist Macquarie offenbar dazugestoßen.

Wenn, wie im Artikel angedeutet, ca. 400 Milliarden verwaltetes Vermögen nicht mehr auf der Plattform der Deutschen Bank verwaltet werden, könnte sich die dann interessante Frage stellen, ob die Kosten der Infrastruktur für das dann verbleibende restliche Vermögen, den Fonds der DWS, nicht steigen werden.

Misys and Temenos agree key merger terms

Another big merger on the way: Misys, which just merged with Sophis not even a year ago, is looking to unite forces with Temenos. As with every merger I have seen in my life, both confirm that both flagship products ("BankFusion" and "T24") will be maintained. However, it will be interesting to see what will happen with other products in the portfolio, e.g. ActisBSP.

Hamburger Sparkasse mandatiert BNY Mellon Service als Serviceprovider

Auch wenn es ein überschaubares Volumen an Spezialfondsmandaten ist - die HASPA nutzt für die gesetzliche und vertragliche Anlagegrenzprüfung die Plattform der BNY Mellon.

Es scheint, als würde sich gerade für diesen Service das Auslagern in Deutschland gut durchsetzen. Hier ist vermutlich das Depotbankrundschreiben der BaFin von Mitte letztes Jahres nicht unschuldig. Bei den weiteren präzisierten Anforderungen aus ebendiesem Rundschreiben (z.B. die Gebührenkontrolle und hier insbesondere der erfolgsabhängigen Gebühren, der NAV-Kontrolle oder der Bestandsführung für nicht-verwahrfähige Vermögensgegenstände) scheint das nicht der Fall zu sein - jedenfalls sind mir bislang keinerlei Auslagerungsaktivitäten dazu bekannt.

State Street Announces Acquisition of Complementa Investment-Controlling AG in Switzerland

With this new acquisition in Switzerland, State Street is buying another system vendor for the asset management market within the German speaking market alongside Princeton Financial Systems: Allocare is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Complimenta.

Veränderungen bei MultiFonds?

Gibt es möglicherweise Veränderungen bei MultiFonds? Auf der Web-Seite ist seit einiger Zeit Frau Van Ta, zusammen mit Bertil Rouveure, dem Gründer von MultiFonds (damals noch "IGEFI"), nicht mehr zu finden. Unbestätigten Marktgerüchten zufolge hat Frau Ta zusammen mit einigen Kollegen das Unternehmen verlassen und ihre Unternehmensanteile verkauft.