Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. announced Thursday that it had a deal to sell Gartmore Investment Management PLC, the London investment management arm of its Gartmore Group, which manages $46 billion of assets in the United States.
The Columbus, Ohio, insurer, which bought Gartmore in 2000, said it would sell the overseas portion of the business to Hellman & Friedman LLC, a San Francisco private equity firm, and members of Gartmore Investment Management's senior fund management and executive team.
Terms of the sale, which is expected to close in July, were not disclosed. The Gartmore unit's senior fund managers and executives are to emerge with a significant ownership stake in the company, it said, and they are to control the business' day-to-day operations.
The sale is of Gartmore's United Kingdom, European, Japanese, and Latin American businesses, with $44.9 billion of assets under management. Robert Rosholt, Nationwide's chief financial officer and an executive vice president, said in an interview that the insurer would retain the U.S. portion of Gartmore Group, which does business as Gartmore Global Investments Inc. in Philadelphia. It previously was known as Villanova Capital.
