ABN Amro Bank NV, the Dutch financial powerhouse, has unsuccessfully courted almost every United States money manager on the auction block since 1992.
Some of the biggest properties it attempted to woo include Templeton Worldwide Inc., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Brinson Partners, Chicago, according to industry sources familiar with the bank's operations.
Its most recent overture was to New York money manager Weiss, Peck & Greer last month, with an offer said to be between $85 million and $100 million for $12.6 billion of assets under management.
Alas, the foreign suitor's advances were again turned down.
Critics say the bank has lacked focus in its search for money managers. This, combined with its need to integrate other recent acquisitions, has prevented it from closing an asset-management deal thus far, these source said.
An Amsterdam-based spokesman for the company, Jule Prast, blamed the bank's foiled plans on the high prices these deals command. ABN Amro is still interested in buying either a U.S. or a United Kingdom-based money manager, he said.
Some of ABN Amro's foreign brethren have willingly ponied up the high cost these companies command.
Seven of the 73 domestic money management deals in 1995, the last year for which figures are available, were done by foreign banks, according to Berkshire Capital Corp.'s annual review of such transactions. The price range of four of those deals was $200 million to $400 million.
And Great Britain's Invesco PLC successfully entered the U.S. market earlier this year when it merged with Aim Management Group Inc.
But a handful of other foreign banks is said to be interested in buying a U.S. money manager. Other unsuccessful suitors are Germany's Commerzbank, British B.A.T. Industries PLC, and Cie. Financiere De Paribas of France.
While ABN Amro's spokesman maintains that price is the only stumbling block, observers say the bank's pockets are too deep for money to be a large issue. These observers, including investment bankers and former employees, instead blame the bank's failure on a haphazard method of seeking deals, and on a misguided strategy.
"Any investment banker would approach these guys with every deal, and they were so unfocused they would look at everything," said a former ABN Amro North America executive.
It doesn't matter if the firm managed institutional assets or retail mutual fund assets, the executive said. "That was part of the problem," he said.
The bank also is digesting recent retail banking and brokerage acquisitions, said Keith Baird, an analyst at Kleinwort Benson Securities, London, which is keeping it busy. He also said the bank's hands-on approach to managing acquired businesses could turn off potential acquisition candidates.
"That doesn't mean they won't get one in the future, but they might have to adapt their approach on control if they want a really good firm that is used to running its own affairs," Mr. Baird said.
But the price issue should not be ignored, others say.
"They just can't fathom the U.S. multiples," Geoffrey H. Bobroff, an East Greenwich, R.I.-based mutual fund consultant, said. "Either prices have to come down or they have to better understand the significance of buying a successful money management firm." And prices are unlikely to come down any time soon, Mr. Bobroff added, given today's record-breaking stock market.
Indeed, Morgan Stanley Group paid a hefty $1.1 billion price tag last June for fund company Van Kampen/American Capital Inc. And Merrill Lynch & Co. put up $200 million for Hotchkis and Wiley, a Los Angeles money manager, that same week.
In response to a reporter's query of whether the bank is likely to buy a U.S. asset manager in the near future, ABN Amro's Mr. Prast asked the reporter if she thought prices on these deals would come down soon. When she replied no, he said, "Well, there's your answer."
The bank has been successful with acquisitions in other lines of business in the U.S. It is already a formidable presence in U.S. finance through its purchase of Chicago-based LaSalle National Corp. Its past U.S. acquisitions include European American Bank, New York, Standard Federal Bancorp, Troy, Mich., Columbia National Bank of Chicago, Comerica Inc.'s Illinois branches, Chicago Corp., and H.F. Ahmanson's Chicago branches.
It also was among the final bidders on Boatmen's Bancshares, St. Louis, which has a formidable trust and asset management business. NationsBank agreed to buy Boatmen's last August.
