THE funds manager AMP is targeting expansion into Asia with the aim of building up a portfolio of infrastructure assets that will allow it take on the likes of the more aggressive players such as Macquarie Group and Babcock & Brown.
The incoming chief executive, Craig Dunn, believes AMP can add a burgeoning asset management arm to its superannuation funds and financial planning operations for which it is better known among its 3.4 million customers.
In a process begun under his soon-to-be predecessor Andrew Mohl, who retires at the end of next month, Mr Dunn will extend the activity of AMP Capital Investors into areas now dominated by the large investment banks and deal-makers such as B&B.
AMP's move came as another big player and competitor in the infrastructure field, Colonial First State, the funds management business of the Commonwealth Bank, yesterday acquired a British electricity utility company, for $3.9 billion. Property and infrastructure are the two prominent areas where AMP is looking to build a larger flow of income, and Asia was the region where the best prospects lay, Mr Dunn told a media briefing yesterday.
AMP already has a foothold in the area, with a global property and Asia fund focusing on Japan and Taiwan, and it has other investment vehicles that have exposure to China and India.
But Mr Dunn wants to have a more direct presence "on the ground" in terms of acquiring and directly managing infrastructure assets. AMP will shortly have a team of property managers based in Singapore looking around the region.
"There are a lot of opportunities to grow our asset management," Mr Dunn said. AMP Capital manages $111 billion worth of funds and is a big investor in and owner of shopping centres, offices and industrial developments around Australia.
But it has also been extending its investments into infrastructure in the past few years and now has stakes in airports including Melbourne, Brisbane and Launceston, tolls roads such as the Lane Cove Tunnel, and educational assets such as the Sydney University Village.
It is this experience that Mr Dunn believes AMP can export.
Such expansion, though, will be "evolutionary rather than revolutionary", as he inherits a company and a strategy he has been closely involved in running since 2002, when a disastrous overseas expansion in Britain almost brought AMP to its knees.
AMP would continue to grow organically rather than by acquisition said Mr Dunn, who takes over the CEO's job after being managing director of the group's biggest business, AMP Financial Services, which is responsible for its financial planning and superannuation operations.
