Goldman Sachs Fund Solutions, a business within Goldman Sachs' Securities Division has teamed up with Amundi, to manage Luxembourg-domiciled funds based on Goldman Sachs' proprietary systematic strategies and to expand its alternative investment funds and Ucits platforms. Goldman Sachs Fund Solutions' move is targeted at increasing assets over the coming years, 'primarily through institutional investors and financial intermediaries'.

Amundi will provide investment management as well as ongoing control and oversight services to Goldman Sachs Fund Solutions, which offers systematic strategies via, through its business line, Amundi Services. The French asset manager will also provide management, due diligence and monitoring services to Goldman Sachs' Ucits platform dedicated to external alternative fund managers. The fund manager already acts as management company for over 300 Luxembourg subfunds1 (Ucits and alternative investments funds -AIFs) with assets totalling €144bn.

'We believe that Amundi's scale, independence and experience combined with Goldman Sachs' product expertise will create a cutting edge platform to meet the needs of existing and future clients of our firms,' said Stefan Bollinger (pictured), co-head of global sales Strats and structuring at Goldman Sachs Securities Division. 'This partnership demonstrates Goldman Sachs's Securities Division's commitment to the fund market in Europe and beyond.'

Investment management of the funds will be carried out by the structured products team of Amundi. The French manager is a top provider of guaranteed and structured funds in Europe (Broadridge, September 2017, open ended funds domiciled in Europe). Amundi has marketed over 90 structured funds as a third party distributor across European markets including its home market France (75 products), Belgium (eight), Austria (two) and Greece (five), of which 55 structures are still live. The French manager also appears as a main distributor of 31 products in Italy, Germany, and France. Goldman Sachs is a top provider of flow products such as turbo certificates, bonus tracker, and warrants in Europe where it has marketed over 950,000.

'The partnership is a testament to Amundi's ambitions to develop world-class infrastructure services for institutional investors, asset managers and fund distributors,' said Guillaume Lesage, head of the operations, services and technology division of Amundi, adding that since 2016, the Amundi subsidiary has attracted over twenty third-party asset managers and asset owners as clients. 'The platform leverages Amundi's strengths in technology, investment and regulatory knowhow, global reach and access to liquidity derived from its scale of assets under management - €1.4tr1 - across all asset classes.'

Amundi Services is an operational platform for asset management companies and institutional investors. It offers order execution, data management, processing and reporting, control of adherence to investment rules and calculation of portfolio risk indicators. The platform is interconnected with over 40 dealers worldwide and currently manages 6,000 portfolios of all types. With €1.4trin assets under management the platform enjoys economies of scale and pricing power for execution of orders.

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