Société Générale is in advanced talks with French rival Amundi and State Street over the sale of its asset management arm, Lyxor.
According to Reuters, Amundi and US giant State Street are busy finalising bids for the French asset manager after other potential buyers dropped out.
The two firms are only prepared to offer €400-500m – around half of the €1bn valuation SocGen is targeting – due to growth challenges and the impact of the coronavirus challenges, sources said.
Deutsche Bank and Northern Trust – which recently entered the European ETF market – are the latest to drop out of the race, the sources added.
“It is a tricky carve-out and it will take time before the unit can be disentangled from the rest of the bank,” one told Reuters.
Last September, it was reported SocGen hired Citigroup to oversee the sale of its asset management arm,
Lyxor is currently Europe’s third-largest ETF issuer behind BlackRock and DWS with approximately €82bn assets under management (AUM).
The potential sale comes just under a year after Lyxor completed the integration of Commerzbank’s asset management activities including its ComStage ETF range.
The French bank acquired the ETF business in July 2018 in a bid to challenge DWS’s position as Europe’s second-largest ETF issuer.
