Northern Trust Corp. reported assets under management of $884.5 billion as of Dec. 31, up 4.5% from three months earlier and up 16.6% from the previous year, according to an earnings release.
The firm's corporate and institutional AUM was $662.7 billion at the end of the year, up 4.4% from the end of the third quarter and up 18.1% from a year earlier.
The bank also reported corporate and institutional assets under custody totaling $5.08 trillion as of Dec. 31, a 6.6% increase from three months earlier and a 16.5% increase from the year before.
The bank's total revenue for the year was $1.045 billion, up 7.8% from the previous year.
Net income for the fourth quarter was $169.7 million, up 1.2% from the fourth quarter of the previous year.
The bank also posted a pretax, $19.2 million charge against fourth-quarter earnings for settlements with institutional investors that had accused Northern Trust of causing them large losses in the bank's securities lending business.
With the money, Northern settled a class-action lawsuit, Diebold vs. Northern Trust. The lawsuit was originally filed on March 30, 2009, in the U.S. District Court in Chicago by Joseph L. Diebold Jr., a participant in the $19.8 billion 401(k) plan of Exxon Mobil Corp., Irving, Texas, over losses from his investment in a Northern Trust S&P 500 index fund.
In addition, Northern partially settled another suit by the $1.3 billion Louisiana Firefighters' Retirement System, Baton Rouge, which originally brought the complaint in November 2009; other plaintiffs in the suit were the $9.9 billion Chicago Public School Teachers' Pension & Retirement Fund; $499 million Pontiac (Mich.) General Employees' Retirement System; and $259 million Pontiac (Mich.) Police & Firemen's Retirement System.
That complaint, also filed in the U.S. District Court in Chicago, alleged breach of fiduciary duties and breach of contract.
Further information on the settlements was not immediately available.
Steve Daniels at Crain's Chicago Business, a sister publication of Pensions & Investments, contributed to this story.
