Nomura, Japan's financial services group, Standard Chartered Bank (StanChart), the UK-based Asia-African bank, and US-based Morgan Stanley are in the race to acquire ABN Amro Asia Equities (India), the broking arm of Netherlands-based ABN Amro Bank. | |
| The broking arm is a subsidiary of ABN Amro Asset Management in India, which along with the private banking business of the Dutch bank would be bought by Europe's Fortis as a part of a deal for the acquisition of ABN Amro Bank globally. |
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| Fortis wants to sell the institutional and retail broking subsidiary of ABN Amro Asset Management and has already received interests from Nomura, StanChart and Morgan Stanley, according to banking sources. |
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| The sources said, "Foreign institutions are eyeing the brokerage business as this gives them a readymade platform to access institutional portfolios. This also enables them to scale up their existing operations.'' |
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| ABN Amro Bank is in the process of being acquired in a ¤71 billion deal by a consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Fortis and Banco Santander. |
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| According to the arrangement, the private banking and asset management business of ABN Amro would be bought by Fortis and the retail and corporate banking business by RBS. |
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| The bank's asset management business in India has assets under management of around Rs 8,000 crore, of which the brokerage business constitutes about 5 per cent. In May 2006, the Netherlands-based bank had launched the retail broking business. |
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| Last year, Fortis, a banking and insurance major, had partnered with IDBI Bank and Federal Bank to float a life insurance company. Recently, Lehman Brothers bought the institutional brokerage business of Mumbai-based Brics Securities. |
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| In August, StanChart acquired 49 per cent stake in UTI Securities for Rs 147 crore. This acquisition gave a big boost to the bank's retail broking business. |
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| The institutional broking business in India is worth $1 billion and growing at 15-20 per cent a year, which has lured Wall Street majors such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. |
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