State Street Venture Bolsters Global Quest for Asset Firms

State Street Corp. on Thursday expanded a continuing effort to invest in start-up asset managers that provide value to its institutional clients.

The Boston banking company said it has formed a joint venture with ABP, a Dutch pension fund for public employees — among the top three such funds worldwide — that manages about $140 billion.

The venture, to be known as State Street Global Alliance LLC, is a continuation of a three-year-old initiative. This so far has seen State Street take majority stakes in eight investment companies, some of which focus on private equity, said John Snow, chairman of the joint venture and a bank executive vice president.

State Street is taking a two-thirds stake in the venture, whose other terms Mr. Snow declined to disclose.

State Street Global Alliance will seek to invest $5 million to $10 million in roughly two start-up companies or niche players per year. These companies should have products desirable to its institutional clients, he said.

“We want to attract certain types of investment talent into the organization,” Mr. Snow said. “Anywhere that we find an innovative investment strategy,” he said, the alliance would invest. It will seek out opportunities anywhere in the world, he added.

“We have a view that the marketplace is increasingly a global market,” he said. State Street was attracted to ABP because of its size and its established relationships with asset managers worldwide, Mr. Snow said.

Four of the eight investment companies in which State Street holds a majority stake are to join the alliance; these include Advanced Investment Technology, a U.S. equity quantitative fund manager based in Clearwater, Fla., and Rexiter Capital Management, a London-based active fundamental emerging markets manager.

State Street, which manages more than $700 billion of assets around the world and administers more than $6 trillion, has said it plans to increase its presence in the European pension market and to form alliances where it can.

Building both its custodial and management businesses are “high priorities” for State Street, said Ronald I. Mandle, an equity analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.

Mr. Mandle said the company has generally favored a joint venture strategy “because it’s cheaper than starting from scratch.”


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