Asset manager IPO rewards Amundi's early India bet

Billionbrains Garage Ventures

13/07/2026 02:51

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist.  The opinions expressed are her own.
By Shritama Bose

    MUMBAI, July 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) - India's mom and pop investors are shoring up Amundi's AMUN.PA fortunes. When SBI Funds Management SBIA.NS — the country's largest asset manager — makes its trading debut, the French financial giant looks poised to earn a strong return on its 15-year-old investment. It validates a long gamble on Indian savers and underlines the value of a locally dominant partner.
The $99 billion State Bank of India SBI.NS is targeting a 1.17 trillion rupee ($12.26 billion) valuation for the asset manager, of which it owns 62%. SBI and Amundi's local unit together are offering up to a 10% stake in the float. The sale would crystallise a 38% annualised return on the French company's 2011 investment, per Breakingviews calculations.
That payoff is due partly to Indian households shifting savings away from banks and into traded assets, spurred by lacklustre deposit yields. Equally useful was a high-voltage campaign by the asset-management industry touting the virtues of mutual funds everywhere from railway compartments to sports broadcasts. A surge in monthly subscriptions known as systematic investment plans has supported local equities during the past 18 months' unprecedented bout of foreign selling.
Mutual funds now make up 10% of India's household financial savings, twice the level of a decade ago. A key beneficiary is SBI Funds, which commands 15% of this market — 12.5 trillion rupees ($131 billion) in assets under management. Its network of more than 132,000 distributors and 23,000 SBI bank branches gives it an unmatched edge in selling fund schemes.
There's ample room for growth: in India, mutual fund assets amount to only 19% of GDP, compared with 57% in Germany, 73% in Brazil and 126% in the United States.
It suggests richer fruits in store for Amundi, which will continue to own 32% of SBI Funds after the IPO. At home, CEO Valérie Baudson faces a conundrum: three quarters of inflows are going into fast-growing but low-fee index trackers, while the more lucrative active business remains heavily reliant on bank distribution. Some 44% of assets are still in France, where it enjoys long-standing access to Crédit Agricole and Société Générale branches, whereas penetrating Northern Europe has proved harder.
In less-mature markets such as India, however, Amundi can simply strike alliances with the country's largest lenders and see fees balloon. Asia's share of its assets has already risen to 20%.
To be sure, non-bank challengers aim to disrupt that model by sourcing customers digitally — among them Jio BlackRock, backed by Mukesh Ambani and Larry Fink, and top broker Groww's owner Billionbrains Garage Ventures BILO.NS. Still, direct channels account for less than half of mutual fund sign-ups. For now, Amundi can savour its gains.
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CONTEXT NEWS
SBI Funds Management set a price band of 545 rupees to 574 rupees per share for its Mumbai initial public offering, State Bank of India said in a filing on July 8. The $1.2 billion offering, which will open for subscriptions on July 14, will target a market capitalisation of 1.17 trillion rupees for the asset manager.
Majority owner SBI will sell up to a 6.3% stake and its partner Amundi will offer up to a 3.7% stake in the IPO. SBI Funds will not issue new shares.
Nine bookrunners, including Kotak Mahindra, Axis Capital and BofA Securities, are advising the issue.

(Editing by Jon Sindreu; Production by Aditya Srivastav)
((For previous columns by the author, Reuters customers can click on BOSE/shritama.bose@thomsonreuters.com))