ASSET MANAGEMENT: Mergers shake up the rankings

Mergers and acquisitions continue to transform the asset-management business, as the latest InterSec Research Corporation ranking of the largest 250 non-US asset managers shows. The table provides a snapshot of the industry at year-end 1998 and many of the most eye-catching changes from the year before - both in terms of managers' positions in the ranking and the value of assets under management - are the result of industry consolidation. UBS rises from third to second position, leapfrogging Groupe Axa of France. In 1997, the old UBS had a total of $485.5 million under management. By the end of 1998, following consummation of the merger of Swiss Bank Corp and UBS, the new UBS had $1,144.5 billion under management, putting it closer to perennial ranking leader Kampo of Japan which had $1,685.4 billion under management at the end of 1998. In a recent interview with Euromoney, UBS chief executive Marcel Ospel underlined the bank's appetite for expanding in private banking, an asset management-type business, both by building and through acquisition.