Belgian-Dutch financial group Fortis said on Monday its first step in acquiring parts of ABN Amro's business was going smoothly, with its asset management arm due to become part of Fortis in three weeks.
Having gained approval from the Dutch central bank to demerge ABN's asset management unit in late January, Fortis said that the combined asset manager will have 240 billion euros ($370 billion) under management and an equal split between retail and institutional clients. "It helps a lot that the companies were run fairly autonomously from the parent companies," Richard Wohanka, Chief Executive of Fortis Investments, told reporters.
About 500 of a combined staff of 2,600 will become redundant, Wohanka said, although the asset management unit would try to find positions for most within the Fortis group. He added that the merger of the two asset management units will give Fortis a wider global footprint, particularly in the Americas and Asia and deliver annual cost savings of about 145 million euros from 2010. Fortis, along with Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Spain's Santander bought ABN Amro in October 2007 for 70 billion euros. Fortis, which is paying about 24 billion euros for ABN's Dutch operations and asset management arm, declined to say how much it paid for the soon-to-be demerged ABN's asset management unit.
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