The chief executive of Italian fund manager Eurizon suggested Europe’s capital market reforms had aided the firm in capturing a quarter of Italy’s fund flows last year.
The updated Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) is well known to have caused distributors to scale back the amount of asset managers they work with, partly to handle regulatory risk by working with trusted brands.
Eurizon reported an 8.2% increase in assets under management to €313.6 billion in 2017, and more than €19 billion of net flows.
Tommaso Corcos, CEO, said he was “fully satisfied” with the results which were achieved due to the “increasingly close and productive collaboration with our distributors and other Italian and international partners”.
He said: “The strong interaction with our distribution networks has been fundamental to the development of the company, which also benefited from the regulatory changes brought on by MiFID II.”
The inflows of €19 billion in 2017 compared to €18 billion in 2016.
The firm said it had gained the largest share of inflows in Italy for the fifth consecutive year, which included €18.7 billion of mutual fund sales, almost a quarter of the Italian asset management industry’s total net inflows.
However, as a portion this was down on 2016’s volume, when Eurizon captured a third of Italian net inflows.
Eurizon’s bond funds raised the most in 2017, at €10 billion. Equity funds raised €824 million and money market funds saw outflows.
In 2017, Eurizon – which is owned by bank Intesa Sanpaolo – saw a nearly 27% increase in fee and commission income to €718.3 million compared to 2016.
Eurizon also said it had had the highest net inflows in Europe for multi-asset funds. Eurizon highlighted its increasing focus on Eastern Europe in collaboration with its parent bank, saying net inflows of €238 million were recorded in 2017, with €140 million of that in the fourth quarter.
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