Genworth Financial Acquires Alternatives Provider Altegris

Genworth Financial said Tuesday that it would acquire the Altegris companies, adding access to that firm’s alternative investment products on Genworth Financial Wealth Management’s (GFWM) platform available to RIAs and broker-dealer advisors. The acquisition is expected to close by year-end 2010; Genworth said that upon closing it would pay $35 million in cash for Altegris, along with “additional performance-based payments.”

Once completed, Genworth said the addition of Altegris’s $2 billion in client assets, in managed futures and hedge fund products, would leave it with about $23 billion in AUM. In a statement, Gurinder Ahluwalia, president & CEO of GFWM , says the acquisition “will provide independent financial advisors an expanded set of offerings that are integral to serving the needs of their clients."

(An article by Rydex AdvisorBenchmarking Maya Ivanova in Investment Advisor’s October2010 issue confirmed advisors’ growing interest in alternative investments.)