RBS (Luxembourg), formerly part of the UK’s Royal Bank of Scotland group, has been renamed FundRock Management Company as the sale of it to private equity firm, BlackFin Capital Partners, closes.
Royal Bank of Scotland’s trustee and depositary business established RBS (Luxembourg), a Ucits management company, in 2004 to extend its funds governance business to Luxembourg. The sale sees the bank, which had to take state assistance during the financial crisis, refocusing more on its UK funds business, though RBS continues to operate a banking and depositary business in Luxembourg.
When it was still RBS (Luxembourg) in November, the FundRock business had €33 billion of assets under management. It currently employs over 60 people.
Revel Wood, chief executive of the new business describes the firm as Luxembourg’s “number one” independent fund management company based on its November assets figure.
“[The transaction] is a very positive development for our business and our clients as we seek to extend our position from number one in Luxembourg to number one in Europe,” he says.
BlackFin is a private equity fund manager regulated in France that specialises in the financial services industry. It has €200 million worth of transactions in Europe and its portfolio includes Kepler-Chevreux, an institutional broker, and NeoXam, an asset management software provider.
Laurent Bouyoux, founding partner at BlackFin, says BlackFin had been “looking at acquisitions in the Luxembourg management company sector for some time”.
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