The consolidation trend among investment houses continues, as sources inform “Globes” that investment house Altshuler Shaham is in talks with Perfect Investment House. Altshuler Shaham turned to Perfect after talks with Prisma broke down.
Altshuler Shaham manages about NIS 10 billion, while Perfect manages NIS 2.5 billion, mostly in long term savings instruments.
Altshuler Shaham is managed and owned by co-CEOs Gilad Altshuler and Kalman Shaham.
In recent weeks, Altshuler Shaham has been in merger talks with Prisma, but the talks collapsed, among other reasons, because Altshuler Shaham did not want to take on Prisma's estimated NIS 1billion debt. Perfect, on the other hand, has no debt.
In 2006, Perfect led the industry by raising the most funds in its provident funds, but it came at a cost of high fees paid to sales agents, which significantly eroded margins.
In addition to the Altshuler Shaham-Perfect deal, many investment houses are in merger or acquisition talks. The difficult state of global and local capital markets has sharply cut profits, and caused many to post losses. One of the major deals in the works is a potential sale by Markstone of its Prisma provident funds to Psagot, and Prisma talks to merge with Meitav Group and Gaon Capital Markets Ltd.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on December 24, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008