Fund giant to give clients access to Deutsche Bank's IPOs, as well as KKR's. Fidelity is giving its brokerage clients access to and follow-on equity offerings underwritten by Deutsche Bank, expanding the German bank's potential investor base base to include Fidelity's retail-brokerage customers, customers of its institutional brokerag business serving RIAs, correspondent broker-dealers and other institutional clients like third-party pension-plan administrators.

Another stream

A few weeks ago, Boston-based Fidelity did a deal with buyout specialists Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) to give its retail and institutional brokerage customers chances to participate in IPOs and subsequent offerings of KKR companies.

"With our new Deutsche Bank alliance and our KKR relationship, Fidelity is well-positioned to offer our customers the ability to participate in new issue equity deals as the IPO market begins to show signs of increased activity,"say Fidelity Capital Markets head Mark Haggerty.

Fidelity's vast distribution network is a nice complement to Deutsche Bank's investment banking and private-client capabilities, according to Deutsche Bank's western hemisphere chief Seth Waugh. "We're confident that this collaboration will significantly benefit clients of both Fidelity and Deutsche Bank by providing a greater volume and diversity of equity investment opportunities," he adds.

Fidelity had $2.8 trillion in custodied assets on 30 June 2009, $1.3 trillion of which it counted as assets under investment management. -FWR

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