Eigentümerwechsel bei VERITAS vollzogen

Von der Öffentlichkeit eher unbemerkt hat sich bei der Veritas ein Eigentümerwechsel vollzogen - sie gehört nun nicht mehr der Gruppe der Société Générale an, sondern der Augur Financial Holding Drei.

State Street Appointed by Lazard Asset Management to Provide Investment Manager Operations Outsourcing Services

State Street wins this prestigious deal to insource Lazard's investment operations, which includes " trade settlement, portfolio administration, reconciliation, performance composite management, data management and preparation of client reports". I am curious why other back office processes remain at Lazard and why and and where there havedrawn the line...

As a result of this mandate, approximately 70 Lazard employees are expected to transfer to State Street. This remindes me a lot of the SGSS / Pioneer deal in Germany, only that they have outsourced middle and back office completely.

I wonder what kind of implications this has on the German business of Lazard, which still runs V3 in their back office...

SGSS names new head of fund distribution services

This was pretty much foreseeable after the acquisition of EFS by Société Générale 2 years ago: my 3 former colleagues (Rautenberg, Lux, Jeandey) and partners of EFS have left. Pascal Bérichel has taken over the CEO role and replaces Gert Rautenberg.

Update 8th of August 2008: Gert Rautenberg has joined Brown Brothers Harriman as a managing director responsible for the firm's transfer agency product, which supports globally distributed fund ranges that are domiciled in Luxembourg, Ireland, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. Prior to joining BBH in Luxembourg, Rautenberg was head of transfer agency and shareholder services for Société Générale Securities Services. Rautenberg was one of the founders and chief executive of European Fund Services, which was established in 2000 in Luxembourg as an outsourcing and service platform for the European investment fund industry and was subsequently acquired by Société Générale in 2006.

Unitech helped European Fund Services in building new IT architecture

This is a very interesting piece of information which highlights the history of the EFS acquisition by Société Générale in 2006 (see mergers & acquisitions consultant CIB Partners) and what has happened behind the scene. There is just one slight error: when SocGen took over EFS there was already a very powerful architecture in place in Luxembourg, which was one of the major reasons for the takeover (see also my other post here).

Roundtable On Transfer Agency Strategies in Europe - Update

This "Transfer Agency Roundtable" discussion (of June 2006) shows the strategies of Société Générale and BNP Paribas on TA (also including Citi, Axa, UBS and Titanium Capital) in Europe. Seems SocGen had found a satisfying solution in acquiring European Fund Services S.A. (a TA services provider and outsourcer, and a company I helped building from 2000-2004) in Luxembourg. In the meantime, EFS has migrated all Pioneer customers onto its platform (IGEFI MultiFonds Transfer Agency) and is currently planning to implement a new platform in the anglo-saxon market.

Société Générale Security Services kauft Fondsadministration von Pioneer Investments

Heute ist es öffentlich: die Übernahme der Fondsadministration (Englisch, hier in Deutsch) der Pioneer Investments Kapitalanlage mbH der Security Service Tochter der SocGen. Der neue Name soll wohl "Société Générale Security Services" bleiben (der Name Euro-VL wurde nicht mehr erwähnt). Angeblich sollen etwa 170 Mitarbeiter übernommen werden.

Die spannendste Frage für mich ist: bleiben die Fonds nun auf Simcorp, oder werden sie auf die strategische Plattform der SocGen, GP3, migriert. Nachdem eben erst die Migration von V3 auf Simcorp so gut wie abgeschlossen wurde, wird das wohl eine schwierige Entscheidung.