By Mathieu Rosemain and Bertrand De Meyer
PARIS -Amundi, Europe’s biggest fund manager, posted quarterly inflows in line with expectations on Tuesday, as more people continued to put money into funds that track the market during a time when investment shifted from the United States to Europe following Donald Trump’s election as president.
Net inflows in the first quarter were 31 billion euros ($35.35 billion), above the 27 billion euros expected on average by analysts polled by the company.
This brought total assets under management to a new record of 2.25 trillion euros at end-March, up 6% from a year earlier.
Inflows benefited from a 21 billion-euro boost brought by a new mandate with the People’s Pension, one of Britain’s largest trust pension schemes, to manage a climate-focused equity index portfolio.
“Current movements are tending to favour European equities, which have clearly risen in first-quarter allocations, while U.S. equities have fallen,” Chief Executive Valerie Baudson told journalists on a call, saying that this was illustrated by outflows on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with underlying U.S. indexes in favour of European equivalents.
An ETF is a type of investment fund that trades on a stock exchange and aims to track the performance of a specific index.
Asked about the market turmoil seen over the last few weeks after Trump’s sweeping announcements on tariffs, Baudson shrugged off concerns about possible risk for Amundi’s AUM.
She also said Amundi remained committed to growing through acquisitions.
“We remain a natural consolidator of the market, and that hasn’t changed and won’t change,” Baudson said.
Amundi’s first-quarter adjusted net income fell 4.5% to 303 million euros, in line with expectations, hit by France’s temporary tax hike on big companies.
This will cost Amundi a total of 72 million euros in 2025, the group said, including 46 million euros in the first quarter alone.
($1 = 0.8769 euros)
(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain and Bertrand de Meyer in ParisEditing by Matthew Lewis)
