AGF Management Ltd. announced today that it will sell its Unisen Holdings Inc. subsidiary to Citigroup’s Global Transaction Services for $122 million (US$97.5 million) in cash.

Unisen will be fully integrated into Citigroup and will continue to service all existing clients. It will also continue to service AGF and AGF mutual funds under a 10-year services agreement effective after closing.

Under the agreement approximately 950 employees will remain with Unisen and about 100 employees will return to AGF. The transaction is expected to close before the end of the year.

AGF renamed its AdminSource Inc. subsidiary Unisen in September 2002 after it acquired Jewelstone Systems Inc. for a reported $60.5 million in cash and shares (plus up to an additional $5 million for meeting operational targets).

In January 2002, AdminSource acquired the third party fund valuation and record-keeping business of TD Bank for $25.5 million. AdminSource had been part of AGF since 1996.

In a statement accompanying today’s announcement, Blake Goldring, president and chief executive officer of AGF, called the deal, “a huge win for AGF shareholders, clients and employees”.

“We can now focus fully on our core investment management business and have created significant value for AGF shareholders. By partnering with a large global provider like Citigroup, we can drive further economies of scale and give our clients access to the best in professional client services and administrative processing,” he added.

“Significant cost savings to mutual fund investors can be generated only through access to this kind of scale,” said Goldring. “We believe this is an important component in providing real value to unitholders.”

In addition to passing on any cost savings to the AGF mutual funds, AGF has stated that for three years from closing, the management expense ratio for each fund will be held to current levels or lower.

With operations in 102 countries, Citigroup GTS has assets under administration of US$610 billion, US$8 trillion in assets under custody and US$1 trillion processed daily.

“We are excited about combining the expertise of the Unisen team with our industry-leading operations and technology capabilities to create a world class securities servicing platform in Canada,” said Frank Bisignano, CEO, Citigroup Global Transaction Services. “This new long-term agreement with AGF further demonstrates our commitment to serving the needs of the investment management industry on a global basis.”