Julius Baer's Artio Files For IPO (ART)

Julius Baer Americas Inc. has filed for its Artio Global Investors, Inc. to come public in an initial public offering. It has filed for registration purposes a sale of up to $1 Billion in securities, although this number is for filing purposes and may likely change.  Artio will take the proposed ticker "ART" on NYSE.  So far Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch are the only listed underwriters, although that may change by the IPO date.

Artio is an asset manager for institutional and mutual fund clients that is best known for International Equity strategies, which was roughly 92% of assets under management as of September 30, 2007.  It also offers other investment strategies in Global High Grade Fixed Income, Global High Yield and Global Equity. All strategies had outperformed their benchmarks since inception and all of its mutual fund share classes that are rated by Morningstar carried either a 4-star or 5-star rating.  Both stats are according to the filing.  It has increased assets under management from $2.9 billion as of 2002 to $73.2 billion as of September 30, 2007.

After the offering there will be three classes of common stock, and it appears that parent Julius Baer will still hold shares.  We’ll follow up later if there are any changes to that.  For the nine-months ended September 30, 2007, its asset management revenues were listed as $321.3 million, and total revenues were were $334.1 million.  For the same period in 2006, those same revenues were $214.9 million and $223.9 million respectively.

Jon C. Ogg
February 12, 2008