International News – May 24 2001

The founding members of the Evensky Group are dissolving their partnership only weeks before financing they sought for part of a US$45 million financial planning empire is finalised.

Husband and wife partners Harold Evensky and Deena Katz will pull their planning firm, Evensky, Brown & Katz, out of the Evensky Group holding company to pursue their "private family office" vision on their own.

Neither party has disclosed any reasons for the business divorce, however industry speculation about the timing suggests the problems were significant, according to a report in Financial Planning Magazine in the US.

Earlier this year, Evensky Group missed its self-imposed deadline of the end of March for its US$25 million first round of funding.

The funding would have enabled the holding company to buy five financial planning firms mid-way through this year, giving the group its first step in its pursuit of its proposed US$45 million empire.

Evensky says landing an investment bank for funding was a crucial step, however, the funding was still a couple weeks away. Now, according to Evensky, funding might be as far away as a couple months.

The Evensky Group's vision of private family offices for the affluent market, would require the firm to partner with regional accounting and law firms to handle tax and estate-planning issues. The firm also would offer mortgage financing, auto leasing, bill paying, college planning and trust and fiduciary investment services.

Despite the departure of the founding members, Evensky Group CEO Richard DeWitt will retain the holding company, changing its name as well as pursuing the private family office concept.

DeWitt admitted in an article that the extended fund raising effort did play a role in the "amicable separation."

He says when the trio set out last year to build Evensky Group, Evensky and Katz rolled their independent firm into the holding company, effectively bankrolling the new effort to date.

DeWitt says that over time the fund-raising delay presented "some issues" for his co-founders' firm, based in Coral Gables, Fla.

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Scottish flag- Aberdeen Asset Management has purchased Sweden-based Celexa Group, the European property fund management company for 16.5 million pounds.

This is the second property purchase for the Scottish independent fund management company. Last year, the group bought the property fund management business of Barclays Global Investors The latest acquisition brings property assets under management to more than £4bn, according to a report in UK-based Financial Times newspaper.

Celexa, which holds assets across the UK and Europe and is also the manager of a specialist pan-European logistics property fund, enables Aberdeen to cash in on the growing.

Aberdeen Property Investors, says Celexa will provide the group with an excellent international platform in the emerging European property asset management market.

In the transaction, the company is being purchased from Alecta, Scandinavia's second-largest mutual and life assurance pension company, for roughly 2.9m new shares and £1.4m in cash.

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UK flag- Amvescap has offered Old Mutual a staggering US$224 million for the purchase its subsidiary American fund manager Pell Rudman.

The London-based investment manager will pay US$172 million in cash and up to US$28 million over the next two years, depending on how much of the existing assets are retained, according to US-based online newspaper efinancial news.

The purchase of Pell Rudman is part of Amvescap's plan to use it as the cornerstone of a wealth management business.

Pell Rudman currently provides fund management and financial advisory services to 550 private clients from offices in the US East Coast and mid-west. It has US$8 billion of funds under management. It became part of Old Mutual last year, when Old Mutual acquired United Asset Management (UAM).

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US flag-

There has been a boost in control by US investment houses of all Luxembourg fund assets under management in the last 12 months.

According to a survey by research group Fitzrovia International, US investment firms currently control 20 per cent of all Luxembourg fund assets under management. This is a 34 per cent increase on last years figures.

At present fund managers manage £165.5bn (US$265 billion) of Luxembourg fund assets, given to them through US fund promoters.

As of December 2000, US fund management companies had US108.9 billion worth of assets in Luxembourg equity funds, the largest share. Investment in equity assets increased 14.5 per cent between 1999 and 2000, with investment in mixed equities and bonds increasing 21.1 per cent.

Total fund assets in Luxembourg have increased by US$70 billion to US$817.3 billion over the year to the end of December 2000, according to Fitzrovia.

The US market first turned to Luxembourg in the early 1990s.

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Swiss flag - Dutch based ABN Amro, is set to cut more than 500 jobs from its investment banking business, taking the group's headcount down by nearly 10 per cent.

About 150 jobs are going to be cut in European and emerging markets equities, including Argentina, Russia and South Africa, where ABN closed its office last month, according to Financial Planning Magazine in the US.

The cuts will also include the 70 jobs, which have already been cut in ABN's Asian and Australian equities operations. Nearly 300 positions will also be cut in the US, with roughly half of those coming out of the equities business.

ABN is the latest bank to axe staffing levels in its investment banking divisions as business has slowed. Morgan Stanley last month announced it was cutting 1,400 jobs while Goldman Sachs has axed more than 700.

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US flag - US financial services group, Andersen will hold a meeting later this year to decide if a merger is needed to enhance its position in the marketplace.

The meeting, scheduled for October, comes nearly 12 months after the group divorced from its parent group, Andersen Consulting in August last year, according to the Financial Times Newspaper in the UK.

Andersen's chief executive, Joe Berardino believes Andersen is in a strong position at present and there is no pressing need for a merger. However, Berardino says the merger idea is not completely out of the question.

He says the firm could compete perfectly well without merging, as being the smallest big five financial services firm the group could appear more nimble than its rivals.

Berardino, who took over as chief executive in January, says Andersen has no plans for large-scale consulting lay-offs such as those announced in the past few weeks by KPMG Consulting and PwC, although he says there would be more compulsory redundancies this year than last.

He adds that the firm is continuing to recruit and is expected to end its financial year with between 5 and 10 per cent more employees than it had at the start.

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