Desjardins buys Canadian investment manager Hexavest, earning $ 5 billion in assets

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Desjardins Group, the largest financial services cooperative in North America, has agreed to acquire the assets of Canadian investment manager Hexavest Inc., adding $ 5 billion in institutional funds.

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The purchase is in line with the cooperative’s growth objective of targeting $ 100 billion in assets under management by 2024, Nicolas Richard, President and Chief Operating Officer of Desjardins International Management said on Monday. active. The Quebec-based asset manager had $ 83 billion in assets under management at the end of March.

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In Hexavest, Desjardins obtains a firm based in Montreal with some fifty clients, mainly institutional investors in Asia, Australia, the United States and Canada. Terms of the deal, which is expected to be concluded around September 1, were not disclosed.

The deal comes three months after Hexavest announced the end of an eight-year partnership with Eaton Vance Corp., the global fund manager recently acquired by Morgan Stanley. Eaton Vance owned 49 percent of Hexavest and helped it sell services outside of Canada. A holding company controlled by Hexavest employees bought the stake in February.

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Hexavest’s performance lags behind benchmarks after a few difficult years. An all-country equity strategy returned 7.1% on an annualized basis over the five years ended March 31, behind the MSCI ACWI index by more than five percentage points, according to documents posted on the site. Company web. An emerging markets fund Hexavest did better, with an annualized return of 10.8% over the same period, slightly behind the MSCI Emerging Markets index.

“This transaction also allows us to consolidate Montreal’s position as a hub for asset management,” Desjardins CEO Guy Cormier said in the press release.

Bloomberg.com