Kepler Cheuvreux and CIMB seal binding Cooperation Agreement

On 29th June, Kepler Cheuvreux and CIMB Investment Bank Berhad (“CIMB”) had signed a preliminary cooperation agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding to cross-distribute equity research in both their respective regional markets in Asia and Europe. The intention is also to create a single global program trading platform. After extensive due diligence on both sides and having obtained the requisite board approvals, the cooperation agreement is now final and the joint venture is operational from 2nd October.

CIMB, one of Asia’s largest investment banks, and Kepler Cheuvreux, a leading independent brokerage firm ranked within the top ten for European equities will work together and leverage each other’s strengths in regional research and execution. This will include experts from Kepler Cheuvreux taking up positions in CIMB’s office in Hong Kong to market European equities to Asian clients. In the UK, access to Asian equities will be provided through CIMB sales personnel as well as sales traders already located in London, while the creation of a new desk in Paris will connect continental European clients with the Asian market.

Commenting on today’s signing of the cooperation agreement, Carol Fong, CEO of CIMB Securities said, “Over the past 3-month period of thorough due diligence and foundation building, both teams have assimilated their processes into a single global program trading platform, enabling both parties to reach out to a wider breadth of clients through an intelligent and efficient operating structure. The next steps will be exciting as we are able to offer new and enhanced research capabilities as added value services. This is achievable through a powerful synergy between our strong and dominant positions in both regions coupled with our highly-specialised execution capability backed by highly robust research.”

Laurent Quirin, CEO of Kepler Cheuvreux, added, “Over the summer our clients have been very focused on Asia and, in particular, on the gyrations of the Chinese stock market. I believe that CIMB’s expertise will help our clients to understand what is really going on under the surface of the Asian economies and stock markets. Kepler Cheuvreux has an incredibly strong client franchise in Europe. By using our cooperation with CIMB as a template, we intend to offer equities products from all regions to our clients. I know that CIMB shares a similar philosophy on inter-regional partnerships for their Equities business.”

Today’s cooperation agreement concerns equities only. It is envisaged that the partnership could also be extended to other areas such as equity capital markets, mergers and acquisitions (‘M&A’), retail as well as private banking.

Both companies have an extremely extensive research footprint with 750 stocks under research coverage for CIMB (over 1,000 stocks with partnerships) and 675 stocks for Kepler Cheuvreux.