(Bloomberg) -- Natixis SA has agreed to sell its majority stake in investment firm H2O Asset Management back to the firm’s management.
Natixis last year said it was in talks about a “progressive and orderly unwinding” of its partnership with the London fund manager, which could include a sale of its stake. The French bank will part with the firm after a ten-year run that has brought both success and controversy.
“We agreed with management that we would part amicably in total agreement with management buying our stake in the company,” Jean Raby, Chief Executive Officer of Natixis Investment Managers, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “It’s subject to regulatory approval, and we’re doing this in an orderly manner in a transition that has at the heart of it the interest of our clients.”
H2O, in which Natixis owns just over 50%, has endured a difficult 18-month period of poor returns and controversy over its large holding in bonds linked to a single German financier.
For much of the past decade, H2O has been a jewel in the crown of Natixis’s stable of money managers, wowing an army of loyal clients with often stellar performance, at a time when negative interest rates starved savers of returns.
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
Advertisement