Robert Jenkins, the American chief executive of $100 billion-in-assets London fund manager F&C, is one money management executive who is confident that the stock market’s rally will continue. He is planning to list the venerable asset management firm on the London Stock Exchange later this year.
“Market conditions have improved, and the business is in great shape for us to tell our story to investors,” says the 53-year-old former chief operating officer for Credit Suisse Asset Management’s European business, who also spent many years in various Citibank outposts around the world. “We have always run F&C as if it were an autonomous asset management company, and this is a logical step.”
The listing will suit F&C’s owner, privately held Benelux insurance group Eureko, which acquired F&C from HypoVereinsbank in 2001 for $662 million and also plans to float its own shares. “For Eureko, it makes sense that one of its main assets has a transparent valuation,” Jenkins says. Eureko plans to maintain a majority stake.
F&C has some familiarity with the London Stock Exchange. Its U.K. investment trust Foreign & Colonial has been listed on the LSE since 1868.
