The first quarter of 2013 was a breakout quarter for money manager mergers and acquisitions activity, with total assets involved in transactions jumping to $599 billion — up more than 250% year over year and more than double the fourth quarter of 2012.
AUM involved was at the highest level since the third quarter of 2009, when BlackRock Inc. purchased Barclays Global Investors from Barclays PLC. The first-quarter 2013 increase was driven by Orix Corp.'s acquisition of Rabobank's Robeco Group and a management purchase of a stake in Investec PLC's Investec Asset Management. Those two transactions involved more than $355 billion in assets.
All information in this analysis of money manager M&A activity is based on transactions reported by Pensions & Investments' global reporting staff.
The 25 deals in the first quarter also represented a significant increase in the number of transactions year over year — there were only six money management deals in the first quarter of 2012 — but were a slight drop from the 26 transactions in the fourth quarter of 2012.