Banco Santander SA in Talks to Buy Back 50% Stake in Asset Management Unit
November 02 2016 - 3:12PM
Dow Jones News
By Simon Clark and Jeannette Neumann
Banco Santander SA is in talks to buy back the 50% stake in its
asset-management unit that it sold to two private-equity firms in
2013, according to people familiar with the situation.
Santander sold half of Santander Asset Management to Warburg
Pincus LLC and General Atlantic 3 1/2 years ago in a transaction
that valued the unit at EUR2 billion ($2.2 billion). The deal
generated a net capital gain of EUR700 million for Santander, the
bank said at the time. The asset-management unit had EUR173.6
billion of assets under management as of June 30 and more than 700
staff, mostly in Europe and South America.
The two U.S. private-equity firms are discussing the sale of
their stake in Santander Asset Management after the Spanish bank
and Italian lender UniCredit SpA ended a plan to merge their asset
management units in July. When the merger with UniCredit's Pioneer
Investments unit was first announced in 2015, Santander said the
deal valued its asset-management unit at EUR2.6 billion euros. The
combination with Pioneer would have created a firm with a EUR353
billion under management.
Santander Asset Management was among billions of dollars of
assets that private-equity firms acquired from banks as lenders
sought to raise cash in the wake of the global financial crisis.
General Atlantic and Warburg Pincus have worked together on other
transactions, including last year's acquisition of a 49% stake in
Dubai-based payments processing company Network International.
In the last couple of years, Santander and other European banks
have stepped up their focus on selling asset-management products,
which generate fees and commissions that have helped to boost
profitability as lenders battle rock-bottom interest rates and
sluggish demand for loans.
Write to Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com and Jeannette
Neumann at jeannette.neumann@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 02, 2016 14:57 ET (18:57 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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