World view
US-based online financial services giant Charles Schwab and Barclays are to create create an online foreign exchange where Schwab investors outside the US can buy and sell securities in different currencies.
US-based online financial services giant Charles Schwab and Barclays are to create create an online foreign exchange where Schwab investors outside the US can buy and sell securities in different currencies. The new service, expected to be operating later this year, will end the need for separately negotiated foreign-exchange contracts. It also will allow Schwab customers to move funds between accounts denominated in different currencies.
AMP’s international investment company Henderson Investors has struck a deal with Italy's Banca Popolare di Lodi over the bank’s asset management division. If the deal goes ahead, Henderson will manage about $4 billion in international funds for the Milan-based bank, Italy's ninth largest. The funds would be co-branded by Henderson and Banca Popolare di Lodi, with Henderson also planning, subject to regulatory ap-provals, to establish a branch office in Italy. Banca Popolare will continue to maintain its core asset management capability and management of local funds and would work with Henderson to explore the possibility for new co-branded products.
Mercantile Mutual’s Dutch parent ING and US based health insurer WellPoint have made a joint offer of $US10.4 billion for US health and life insurance giant Aetna. ING says it is only interested in Aetna's financial and international services, leaving the health insurance business to WellPoint. Aetna had already announced in January a plan to split into financial and health businesses. Pressure from Aetna's shareholders over the insurer's depressed share price led to the resignation of the group's chief ex-ecutive Richard Huber last week. Aetna says it is reviewing the offer.
On line brokers Web Street Securities has become the first group in the US to elimi-nate commissions it charges on purchases, sales and exchanges of more than 4,000 mutual funds it offers to online investors. Web Street is expecting to use free fund trades as a loss leader. Mutual fund transaction revenues accounted for only 3.8 per cent of total revenues to online brokerage firms in 1999, according to research group Cerulli Associates.
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