Fidelity International buys Legal & General Investment Management

Fund manager Fidelity International has purchased the personal investing arm of Legal and General Investment Management to add to its 280,000 customers and £20.3bn assets under management.

The deal, which is expected to be completed sometime over the coming 12 months, will bring in another 300,000 customers with £5.8billion of assets into its direct-to-consumer platform.

Fidelity says LGIM’s customers will either pay the same or possibly less than they currently do and benefit from access to its online guidance services and investment tools such as market news and daily analysis.

It comes just a fortnight after the Bermuda-based firm also announced it had bought discount broker Cavendish Online to help bolster its D2C platform.

That purchase was significantly smaller though, only bringing 30,000 new customers and £900million of assets under its management.

But clients from both Cavendish and LGIM will gain access to all of Fidelity’s investment trusts, funds, shares, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that can be held in ISAs, investment accounts or self-invested personal pensions.

A week later, Fidelity’s former international investment subsidiary – Fidelity Investments – declared it would employ another 4,000 people over the next six months as it reaps substantial benefits from the coronavirus pandemic.

Fidelity’s global head of personal investing and advisory Stuart Welch called the arrangement ‘exciting’ and said it ‘reflects our ambition and commitment to the UK direct investor market.’

The transaction will double the number of personal investing clients at Fidelity, but LGIM’s hundreds of thousands of customers will continue to see their funds invested in LGIM accounts.

LGIM has warned that it would name and shame 500 business that it thought was not doing enough to tackle climate change as part of its global warming engagement campaign

He added: ‘Our wealth and retirement planning services, guidance service and tools will help those who want to make the most of their retirement savings and investments. We look forward to welcoming LGIM’s customers and helping them meet their financial goals.’

Michelle Scrimgeour, LGIM’s chief executive, said the deal was a ‘positive step’ for her business that will enable customers to ‘gain Fidelity International’s scale and operational capacity in these specific products while continuing to benefit from the LGIM investment expertise’

Her company warned last week that it would name and shame 500 business that it thought was not doing enough to tackle climate change.

It began a global warming engagement campaign four years ago and has vowed to use its voting power at annual shareholder meetings or sell stocks in funds to incentivise change.

A climate change model has been built by the firm designed to assess the financial risks associated with global warming such as flooding. It has also advocated investing $1trillion in green energy projects and a high carbon price to protect the environment.

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk