As part of a move to expand its retail distribution, financial services group IOOF Holdings has formed a strategic alliance with MacarthurCook.
Under the agreement, MacarthurCook will become the preferred direct property and mortgage investment manager of the IOOF Group. It will also assume responsibility for the management of IOOF's direct property fund.
The alliance comes a week after MacarthurCook informed the market it has been approached by AMP for a possible buy out.
"Clearly our goal is to build a relationship with someone who is appropriate in size to us and certainly from that point of view, dealing with MacarthurCook is very different with AMP," IOOF chief executive Tony Robinson said.
It is too early to comment on how AMP's proposed takeover deal of MacarthurCook will affect the alliance with IOOF, according to Robinson.
"The simple answer to that is if AMP does take over MacarthurCook, we would certainly revisit all of the issues. But we're going into this on the view that the two businesses will work well together without spending time speculating about the ancillary issues," he said.
MacarthurCook and IOOF intend to spend the next few months reviewing their respective product ranges and market opportunities.
If AMP is successful in its bid for MacarthurCook, the company would integrate some of MacarthurCook's struggling funds into its investment arm, an AMP statement to the Australian Securities Exchange said.
