The new chief executive at PFPC Worldwide Inc. says the PNC Financial Services Group Inc. investment unit does not expect to make another deal this year after completing two in December.
Stephen Wynne, who has worked for the Wilmington, Del., unit for 31 years, said it will expand organically by launching an exchange-traded fund and opening an office in Poland.
Mr. Wynne, who had been the president of PFPC since 2005, succeeded Timothy Shack as the CEO on Wednesday. Mr. Shack will remain the unit's chairman. The president post will remain vacant, Mr. Wynne said in an interview, and he does not expect further management changes.
PFPC wants to be a full-service provider of investment products and services, he said. "We continue to grow and invest in a number of directions. We're certainly continuing to pick up the pace."
For the past six months it has been developing an exchange-traded fund. Mr. Wynne said his unit plans to launch the fund by the first quarter of next year, but did not offer size projections.
Richard X. Bove, an analyst at Punk, Ziegel & Co., said the ETF market would be a good one for PFPC, and that developing the fund "would be in keeping with the strategy of moving away from mutual funds to the more innovative investment fund approaches."
PFPC will open an office in Wroclaw, Poland, in the next few weeks and has hired 25 people to work there. Last year it opened a sales office in London, and its depositary services group opened an office in Luxembourg. Mr. Wynne said the unit is focused on expanding in Europe.
In the United States, mergers and acquisitions will slow as it integrates two companies it acquired in December: Albridge Solutions Inc. and Coates Analytics Group LP. "We want to get those bedded down and make sure we have the opportunity of leveraging what we just bought," he said.
Albert Savastano, an analyst at Fox-Pitt Kelton Cochran Caronia Waller, said PFPC is bullish about its recent deals and the opportunity to diversify revenue. "We're going to start seeing some results in the first quarter and definitely by the end of 2008," he said.
Last year PFPC's earnings rose 3% to $128 million from a year earlier as revenue rose 9% to $831 million.
