Seattle-based Russell Investments, consultant to sponsors of defined contribution plans that offers its own proprietary line of off-the-shelf target-date funds, among other things, is on the block again, and the hammer seems already to have fallen.
The London Stock Exchange Group acquired asset management firm Russell when it bought the Frank Russell Co. business last year for $2.7 billion.
But now LSE has announced plans to sell off the investment management unit to a private equity group for considerably less than it paid in June of 2014.
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Boston-based TA Associates is the planned buyer, and the purchase price this time is $1.15 billion; LSE plans to retain some of Russell's business, but that still appears to be a steep discount.
Reverence Capital Partners, based in New York, will make "a significant minority investment in Russell Investments," according to a statement from TA, and the deal is expected to close in the first half of 2016.
The original asking price when LSE put Russell up for sale was $1.4 billion, but when a proposed deal with Chinese brokerage Citic Securities Co. fell through last month in the wake of woes on the Chinese stock market—including allegations about some of Citic's executives—TA stepped into the breach.
Russell Investments has $266 billion in assets under management; in the first half of this year it posted a profit of $43 million. It also offers consulting services with $2.4 trillion of assets under advisory, as of the end of 2014.
The firm itself has more than $1.85 billion in assets.
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