Lloyds Banking Group Plc is on track to launch its wealth management joint venture with Schroders Plc in June. But after the lender lost an arbitration case with Standard Life Aberdeen Plc, the exercise will end up costing more than anticipated. About a year ago, Lloyds announced it was pulling 109 billion pounds ($145 billion) of assets that SLA managed on behalf of Lloyds’s Scottish Widows unit, saying the 2017 merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen created a “material” competitor to the lender’s own insurance business. But with assets under management shrinking to 551.5 billion pounds last year from 608.1 billion pounds at the end of 2017, the prospect of a further 100 billion pounds walking out of the door was clearly unpalatable to the Scottish money manager. “It’s always difficult when friends fall out,” was how Martin Gilbert, the then co-chief executive of SLA, described the legal tussle in May.

Source: Washington Post March 19, 2019 12:11 UTC