T. Rowe Price’s move into Europe

The origins of T. Rowe Price go back to 1937, when the group was formed in Baltimore, Maryland by Mr Thomas Rowe Price. Just over 40 years later, it had become a dominant force in the US domestic institutional fund market.

A joint venture with Robert Fleming was registered with US regulators in 1979, with the recognition that US institutions would increasingly want to allocate a portion of their assets to overseas investments. T. Rowe Price then bought out the operation when Chase Manhattan purchased Fleming in 2000 and changed the name of the company to T. Rowe Price International. Because there was no longer a mutual exclusivity agreement, the US group was now free to market funds in Fleming’s former European heartland.

Now with offices in London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Amsterdam, Mr Ruppert is hoping to turn the $12bn his group has sourced from outside the US to $20bn by 2008.

Many of Mr Ruppert’s 100 or so European clients, such as Skandia, which outsources US equities to T Rowe, employ his services on a sub-advisory basis, which he finds more appealing and profitable than single fund distribution. There are several relationships in the $700m to $1bn size range.

T. Rowe Price has more clients in the Nordic area than other European countries. “When we started trying to build the non-US business, the Nordic area was the first we decided on,” reveals Mr Ruppert. “Nordic investors are keen to invest outside their countries and are not captive to lemming-driven consultant decisions.”

He also works with distributors such as Credit Suisse, UBS, Pictet and Julius Baer in Switzerland. Admitting that T. Rowe Price has no retail brand in Europe, he says these larger banks who sell packaged solutions are always the preferred distribution partners.