Aberdeen offloads Credit Suisse funds to Premier
LONDON (Reuters) - Aberdeen Asset Management (ADN.L) said on Monday it had agreed to sell former Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) funds with 858 million pounds ($1.38 billion) in assets to Premier Asset Management.
The deal will see fund manager Bill Mott return to the helm of the income funds he managed for Credit Suisse in the 1990s as Premier will outsource management to Mott's firm PSigma.
Privately-held Premier will pay 23 million pounds for 10 UK OIEC (Open-Ended Investment Company) funds housed at present with Aberdeen Unit Trust Managers and divided between the Aberdeen Income Funds and Aberdeen Growth Funds umbrellas.
They were renamed as part of Aberdeen's acquisition of Credit Suisse's international funds business, completed earlier this month.
"Given the scale and complexity of the acquisition, it was inevitable that certain parts of the business would be less suited to integration into the Aberdeen business model," Aberdeen said in a statement.
The Credit Suisse income and growth team led by Graham Ashby is now likely to leave the combined firm, sources close to the company said. Ashby has been linked with a move to the asset management division of insurer Liverpool Victoria, and a source with knowledge of the situation said such a move was possible.
Liverpool Victoria denied any deal to bring Ashby on board had been concluded.
An Aberdeen spokesman said the company was not planning to sell any more funds as a result of the Credit Suisse deal.
Aberdeen has about 130 billion pounds in assets, after acquiring 36 billion pounds in assets from Credit Suisse.
The acquisition of the 10 funds will push Premier's assets under management above 2 billion pounds. It will manage the growth funds in-house, while PSigma is handed a deal to run the income funds.
Mott's PSigma Income fund has been a steady performer over the last 12 months, ranked 30th out of 114 funds, according to data from Thomson Reuters fund research firm Lipper.
($1=.6211 Pound) (Reporting by Joel Dimmock; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
