Once again I have to go back in history in order to provide an example of IT investment undertaken in one of the companies I have worked for. The only IT investment done in my current organization has been the CRM system that I have described in my previous postings. I apologize for delivering an example that might be a bit "out of time" but that still gives interesting insights into the management of the foreign subsidiary of a global corporate company.
AXA Investment Managers, based in Frankfurt, started as a fully fledged asset management firm for the German speaking market with its headquarter in Frankfurt. Initially the company operated as a spin-off of AXA Insurance Group Germany in 1994 and serviced mainly the AXA Nordstern insurance group in managing their asset base. Over the years third party business was acquired and the entity became more and more independent from the insurance group. In 1997 AXA IM Paris and London took over the majority of the shares and started integrating portfolio management, sales & marketing and client service into the global AXA IM network.
Until 2002 client portfolios were almost entirely managed out of Frankfurt following guidelines from the Paris and London office. However it became clear that the number of portfolio managers based in Frankfurt was too high in order to manage the business in a profitable manner. Since specific client guidelines for the many separate mandates that AXA IM managed required a local portfolio management the Frankfurt management team decided to fight for keeping its independence. The question was how could Paris be convinced that a small team of portfolio managers would still follow overall guidelines, be linked to the Paris execution desk and still offer local tailor made service?
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