Christmas came early for BNP Paribas with the completion of the acquisition of AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) announced in Paris earlier today. At $ 5.1 bn. (agreed upon valuation when the sale process started five months ago) for approx. $ 850 bn. in assets under management, it looks like a bargain by any measure

For BNP, the most important part of the deal is clearly AXA IM’s European private market assets which will allow the French bank to strengthen its hand in private equity, private debt and infrastructure across the continent. AXA IM’s plain vanilla listed assets business is less interesting — which probably explains why the overall “sum of the parts” was sold on the cheap

The deal is also emblematic of the diverging world views at France’s BNP and AXA. For the the former, it comes a year after the successful sale of BancWest, the highly profitable California bank: the strategic focus on all financial services including asset management in Europe including the UK is now clear. Call it continental universalism

For AXA, the change runs deeper. It’s the dismantling of Claude Bébéar’s lifework which turned a tiny mutual insurer from Normandy into a diversified financial services giant. Now an insurance “pure play” and the world’s 7th largest player in the field, AXA will probably use the proceeds from the sale to accelerate development in the Asia Pacific area — away from Europe. It remains to be seen if it can compete against better run Chinese, US and German insurance companies …