The European asset management house has launched a rights issue to help finance its acquisition of Pioneer, announced late last year.

European fund management group Amundi, which last year agreed to buy Pioneer Investments from Italian banking house UniCredit, has launched a €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) capital increase to finance the transaction. (See the acquisition article here.)

The rights issue will be handled by preferential subscriptions to existing shareholders and will contribute towards paying for the €3.545 billion price tag on Pioneer, according to a statement from Amundi yesterday. The remainder of the acquisition price will be financed through a combination of approximately €1.5 billion of Amundi’s existing resources and about €600 million aggregate principal amount of senior and subordinated debt of Amundi.

Crédit Agricole, which holds 73.86 per cent of Amundi’s share capital, has agreed to exercise a sufficient number of preferential subscription rights to allow the Crédit Agricole group to attain a target shareholding of approximately 70 per cent of Amundi’s shares after the rights offering is completed. Crédit Agricole will subscribe for around 13,571,507 new shares corresponding to 40.40 per cent of the rights offering.