Our history
About us
Following the acquisition of M&G by Prudential in 1999, the two asset management businesses of M&G and PPM (Prudential Portfolio Managers) were merged into a single unit in 2000, with M&G becoming the investment arm of Prudential plc across Europe. We now operate under the M&G brand.
The Prudential Group has been managing pension fund assets since the 1930s. It secured its first institutional mandate in the late 1970s and continued to grow the business, currently managing a range of multi-asset and specialist equity, fixed income and property funds. In 1997, we established our Private Finance Group within our Fixed Income team to focus on non-mainstream, high return debt investments.
Today our focus lies in fixed income, private debt, collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and our complete range of pooled funds which are used to construct both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pension schemes.
Our parent company Prudential began life in 1848 as the Prudential Investment, Loan and Assurance Association. By the 1860s, the company had firmly established itself, particularly as a provider of insurance policies for Victorian workers, and in 1866, the name was changed to The Prudential Assurance Company. In the 1920s Prudential expanded its operations into Europe and further afield to India, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Over the next 50 years, Prudential continued to grow and in 1978, Prudential Corporation was set up as a holding company.
In 1982, PPM was established as a separate company out of Prudential’s investment department. At the same time Prudential Property Investment Managers (PRUPIM) was established to continue the management of property. Investment management was widened into overseas markets and in 1986, Prudential purchased an American insurance company, Jackson National Life. In 1994, building on existing businesses in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, Prudential Corporation Asia was established to spearhead its expansion into other dynamic Asian markets.
Municipal & General Securities Company Limited was a subsidiary of the company responsible for bringing the concept of unit trusts, originating in the US, to the attention of the Bank of England in the 1930s. It is fair to say that M&G was one of the main contributors to the unit trust movement in this period as not only did M&G launch the first unit trust in the UK, but it was also largely responsible for drafting the principles which went into the Unit Trust Act.
Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, M&G pioneered many unit trusts and different types of investment, including charity funds in the 1960s and overseas unit trusts in the 1970s. From the 1990s onwards, M&G became one of the largest retail managers in the UK, offering a wide range of retail pooled funds.