Old Mutual

Old Mutual plc

Company type	Public (LSE: OML, JSE: OLOML)
Industry	Insurance, banking and asset management
Founded	1845
Headquarters	London, England, UK
Key people	Christopher Collins, Chairman Jim Sutcliffe, CEO
Revenue	£4,941 million (2007)
Operating income	£1,668 million (2007)
Net income	£1,189 million (2007)
Website	www.oldmutual.com

Operations

Old Mutual plc (LSE: OML, JSE: OLOML) is an international insurance company. It was founded as a mutual insurance company in 1845 under the name of The Mutual Life Assurance Society of the Cape of Good Hope.[ Originally based in South Africa and focused on the South African market, it is now London based and has major assets in the United Kingdom and in the United States, where the majority of its funds under management were located before the Skandia deal mentioned below. Its South African holdings include Nedbank Group Ltd. (formerly known as Nedcor), South Africa's fourth largest banking group and Mutual & Federal - the second largest property and casualty insurer in South Africa. It also has minor operations in Namibia, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

In 1997 and 1998 it acquired UK stockbrokers Capel-Cure Myres and Albert E. Sharpe respectively.[1] Then in 1999, it was demutualised and listed on London Stock Exchange and JSE Securities Exchange. Old Mutual is the largest financial company listed on the JSE Securities Exchange by market capitalisation. It is also a FTSE100 company.

In 2000 it bought Gerrard Group, a financial services concern, for $857m.[2] In that same year,Old Mutual acquired United Asset Management, based in Boston, for US$1.46 billion in cash and assumed UAM net debt of around US$769 million. Old Mutual was able to acquire a large and diverse but primarily US-based asset manager, and spent the next several years restructuring the former UAM affiliate's economics eliminating certain subadvisors. In this acquisition the PBHG Funds of Pilgrim Baxter & Associates was included and kept. The SEC had charged PBHG with fraud and breach of fiduciary duty in connection with market timing of the PBHG Funds which occured between June 1998 and December 2001. Harold Baxter provided non-public PBHG Fund portfolio information to a close friend in the brokerage business, who was president of Wall Street Discount Corporation, a registered broker-dealer. The friend then passed this information to Wall Street Discount customers who used the portfolio information to market time the PBHG funds and to exercise hedging strategies through other financial and brokerage institutions. After terminating market timing for most investors in the middle of 2001, Pilgrim and Baxter allowed certain personal acquaintances to market time through the end of the year. During this period, from 1998 through 2001, the company earned significant investment advisory fees. Because of this illegal activity, fund investors suffered. Finally, on April 23, 2007, a US$125 million settlement was paid to 254,000 investors. Consquently these funds underwent a name change and are now known as the subadvisor Liberty Ridge Capital.

Original Old Mutual headquarters in Cape Town.In 2005 Old Mutual launched a $6.5bn (£3.6bn) bid to acquire majority control of Swedish insurer, Skandia. In late January 2006 it declared its offer unconditional, having gained a 72.3% holding. It has since initiated a compulsory purchase of the remaining shares. The completion of this would allow Skandia to be delisted from the Swedish stock exchange. [1] This acquisition brings Old Mutual businesses in the United Kingdom, several other countries in Europe, and in Latin America, the Far East and Australia.

It is the main sponsor of the Zimbabwe cricket team as well as the Old Mutual Two Oceans Marathon (run in Cape Town), the Encounters series of music concerts and the country's largest choral music competition, the National Choir Festival.

See also

• BoE Stockbrokers

External links

• Official site
• Official Old Mutual US site