Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM) is closing its Frankfurt office in a move that will see the €800 million business transferred to a bigger office in London following a change in its European strategy.
The asset management division of the State's second-biggest bank has been attempting to recover ground since the departure of four top investment managers last year led to the loss of mandates worth more than €13 billion.
Three client support staff will lose their jobs when its Frankfurt office closes next month, leaving the division without a presence on the ground in continental Europe and absent from one of its biggest financial centres.
Another two staff, who have been on secondment in Germany, will return to BIAM headquarters in Dublin.
Open since 1996, the Frankfurt office has seven clients who have some €800 million under management with BIAM. The funds were managed in Dublin while the client service part of the business was managed in Frankfurt.
The level of business at the office represents only a small portion of the €46 billion managed by BIAM and is significantly smaller than the €3.6 billion under management in its London office. However, the presence in Frankfurt gave it direct access to clients in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, where most of them are said to be based.
While the departure of four managers to Australian group Perpetual Trustees led major clients to review their relationships with BIAM, its spokeswoman indicated last night that there had been no withdrawal of mandates from the Frankfurt office.
"The level of funds hasn't changed very significantly in recent times," she said. BIAM decided to change its European strategy "a number of months ago" and informed staff of the development in June.
"The other important aspect of our plan is that we will be concentrating our future marketing efforts on a small number of high potential areas in Europe. With this in mind we will be looking to hire specialist business developers in a number of markets in the coming months," she said.
"This change in strategy reflects our continuing confidence in our potential to grow in Europe - we believe the new direction we are taking will accelerate this."
Apart from Dublin, London and Frankfurt, BIAM has no other offices in Europe. It has three US offices - in Santa Monica, Chicago and Greenwich, Connecticut - and offices in Tokyo, Melbourne and Canada.
A string of clients have withdrawn valuable business from BIAM since Perpetual Trustees headhunted deputy chief investment officers John Nolan and Des Sullivan, and portfolio managers John Forde and Mr Richard Kelly, to join a €1.3 billion global equities business in Dublin.
Perpetual will next week publish its first set of results since the defections last September. By last March, BIAM had lost €13.5 billion in funds under management.
