Additional piece in place for Credit Agricole

In a bid to hit $2 billion in funds under management within its first 18 months, French fund manager Credit AgricoleAsset Management (CAAM) has selected Equity Trustees as its Australian responsible entity.

Richard Borysiewicz, CAAM chief executive officer for Australia and New Zealand, said the decision to appoint an external responsible entity (RE) rather than acting under its own Australian Financial Services Licence was made for reasons of timing and expertise.

“The early start-up resources that I had here were quite modest; you require staff and expertise and EQT [Equity Trustees] had this and had the structure ready to go.

“We could certainly do it ourselves, we’re a big organisation … but it would nonetheless take more time [and] it was a way of focusing the resources that I had on doing what we do best, rather than administration,” Borysiewicz said.

He said CAAM considered a total of four RE providers, with EQT’s history in fixed income and absolute return funds, positive feedback from fund managers and business model alignment with CAAM helping it over the line.

“That’s not to say the others I looked at weren’t good, but EQT was the best fit for us,” Borysiewicz said.

While there was no official tender process, he said the four were asked to supply submissions indicating their capabilities and costs, with Borysiewicz then undertaking his own due diligence to identify the organisation of best fit.

According to Borysiewicz, the business has already attracted considerable interest from Australian superannuation funds and large institutional multi-manager funds, and is expected to announce a number of mandate wins shortly.

He has set an interim target of around $2 billion in institutional funds under management by June 30, 2008.

“That’s often difficult for a start-up [to predict], but I’m happy to say that in the first 18 months we aim to be at about $2 billion … and I’m quite comfortable with that.

“But to be fair, that’s a very shallow and one-dimensional view of your business. You actually measure yourself on other metrics,” he said, while indicating he considers reputation, brand, revenue growth and quality of staff as much more appropriate measures of business success.

The local asset management arm of CAAM launched its domestic arm in January this year, currently employing around three staff in its Sydney office and planning to grow this considerably in the year ahead.