Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Group (SuMi TRUST), Japan’s largest asset management group, has completed the merger (effective 1 October 2018) of its retail and institutional asset management businesses in response to client needs and as part of its overall growth strategy.
The new entity, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management (SMTAM), will become Asia’s largest asset management company, with USD 550 billion AUM.
Previously, SuMi TRUST’s institutional clients were managed by Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank (SMTB) while retail clients were the responsibility of SMTAM. The revamp will carve out the asset management business from the trust bank entity and integrate it with SMTAM.
The President of the merged business will be Yoshio Hishida, an industry veteran with over three decades of experience in asset management who has served as managing executive of the asset management business at SMTB for the last two years.
David Semaya former chairman of Nikko Asset Management will serve as one of the company’s co-chairmen alongside Mr Hideki Hiraki, formerly President of SMTAM.
Hishida says: “The newly combined business will have total AUM of USD 550 billion and we understand this is a sign of trust in our asset management skills from our clients. As there is no duplication of client basis, we can focus on the expansion of our business and no need to bother with disposition of organisation or product line-up. Our reorganisation reflects our conviction that we can meet the growing diversity of client needs with high quality solutions by the integration. In addition we believe the reorganisation will serve as a springboard for even greater growth of our USD 20 billion of assets from non-Japanese investors in Asia, the Middle East and Europe.”
At present SuMi TRUST has five existing UCITS funds covering the European market, holding over USD 550 million AUM and plans to expand the product line-up in the future. Two of these funds, the Sakigake High Alpha – Japan Thematic Growth and the FGS – Japan Strategic Growth became available in the UCITs form for international investors in June 2018.
