Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has agreed to divest its global asset management arm Colonial First State Global Asset Management (CFSGAM) to Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking (MUTB) in a deal worth A$4.13bn ($2.9bn).
The latest deal implies that CFSGAM will be excluded from plan to demerge CBA’s wealth management and mortgage broking businesses, which was announced in June this year.
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By GlobalDataCalled First State Investments outside of Australia, CFSGAM managed around $213bn in assets at the end of June 2018. The business has offices in the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
CBA expects to book a gain of nearly $1.5bn from the deal after tax. The deal is expected to be wrapped up in mid-2019, subject to regulatory approval.
CBA CEO Matt Comyn said: “Today’s announcement represents another important milestone in CBA’s strategy to focus on its core banking businesses and to create a simpler, better bank.
“The sale of CFSGAM to MUTB represents significant value for CBA shareholders and is a positive outcome for CFSGAM clients and employees.”
MUTB president and CEO Mikio Ikegaya added: “We expect CFSGAM will continue to deliver leading investment solutions to its existing global client base. We also believe CFSGAM’s highly seasoned investment teams and competitive product line-ups will enable us to deliver new investment opportunities to our clients.”
Meanwhile, CBA named Jason Yetton as the CEO and Andrew Morgan as the CFO of its demerged wealth management and mortgage broking business dubbed NewCo. The pair will assume their new responsibilities on 1 December 2018.
NewCo includes Colonial First State, Count Financial, Financial Wisdom, Aussie Home Loans as well as CBA’s minority stakes in CountPlus and MortgageChoice.
Yettonmost recently served at the CEO and managing director of SocietyOne. Previously, he also had stints at Westpac and BT Financial Group.
Morgan currently serves as the CFO of wealth management at CBA. He formerly worked at Lend Lease, National Australia Bank, Radian and Perpetual.