Lloyds gives £30bn contract to Blackrock

LLOYDS Banking Group has handed the world’s biggest fund manager a £30bn investment contract after ending its deal with Standard Life Aberdeen.

The bank has chosen Blackrock to manage a large slice of its Scottish Widows assets, leaving rival fund houses to fight for the remaining portion of its £109bn contract.

The world’s biggest banks and money managers have been jostling for a chunk of the mandate ever since Lloyds said it was pulling the contract from Standard Life Aberdeen earlier this year. Aberdeen began managing assets for Lloyds’ Scottish Widows in 2014, but Lloyds had the right to pull out of the deal if the company joined forces with a competitor, as it did with Standard Life in an £11bn tieup last year.

The Scottish investment giant is in a dispute with the bank over the matter.

Its co-heads, Martin Gilbert and Keith Skeoch, said in February that they were “disappointed” by the decision, which came just six months after the merger completed and a year after Mr Gilbert said “we have a very close relationship with Lloyds and they welcome this deal wholeheartedly, I think”. The funds being pulled from Standard Life Aberdeen represent roughly 17pc of its assets under management.

It is not known how the remainder of the assets will be split, but Schroders is widely tipped to be a front-runner. Earlier this week the two sides confirmed they were in discussions about merging their wealth-management units.

Lloyds said it was “near to finalising arrangements” in respect of the remaining £80bn of assets. It added that it was also hoping to sign a “strategic partnership” with Blackrock following the deal that would cover alternative asset classes, risk management and investment technology.