By Mathieu Rosemain
PARIS (Reuters) - A move by UniCredit (LON:0RLS) to bring back in-house around 15% of fund products it currently sells to its clients does not clash with the Italian bank's accords with Amundi, the head of the French asset manager said.
UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel said on Tuesday the bank targeted increasing by 400 million euros a year the fees it pockets from the sale of asset management products, of which it had 134 billion euros placed with clients at the end of September.
To this aim UniCredit wants to get to around 20 billion euros of in-house funds, Orcel said.
"This approach is totally compatible with the agreements we have with UniCredit, which are not called in to question and which expire in July 2027," Amundi CEO Valérie Baudson told reporters late on Thursday in a conference call.
UniCredit and Amundi are tied by a 10-year distribution agreement they signed in 2017, when UniCredit sold its internal asset manager Pioneer to Amundi.
Under that deal, the French group's funds must account for a predefined portion of the Italian bank's total assets under management.
Orcel, who has been working to increase the bank's fee income since arriving in 2021, said on Tuesday UniCredit had been "rebalancing" its relationship with Amundi.
Reuters first reported in May that UniCredit was reducing the proportion of Amundi funds it placed with its clients, after Orcel failed to convince the French partner to renegotiate their contracts ahead of expiry.
By replacing the Amundi funds with its own products or those of partners who pay the bank more to sell their funds, UniCredit increases the portion of distribution fees in asset management it pockets.
Orcel said on Tuesday his goal was to retain 80% of distribution fees in three or four years' time, compared with 70% at present.
"In terms of value, I think in-house, strictly speaking, we're looking at about 20 billion euros," he said.