Aviva Investors looked beyond Wall Street’s meltdown yesterday to announce its formal launch as an integrated global asset management division of Aviva plc, the world’s fifth-largest insurance group. The announcement marked the combination of separate Aviva asset management companies in 15 countries into one operation the company says will become a “global investment powerhouse” with headquarters in Des Moines.

“Obviously, we couldn’t anticipate what was going to happen to the market,” said Greg Boal, CEO of Aviva Investors North America, who said the company did consider postponing the announcement. However, “we felt we should move forward with our plans and not let that distract us from our aspirations,” he said.

Currently managing a portfolio of $469 billion through 21 worldwide locations with 1,100 employees, Aviva Investors is a relative newcomer to the North American market, with less than 10 percent of its assets invested in the United States and Canada. The company is a division of British-based Aviva plc, which acquired Des Moines-based AmerUs Group Co. in 2006.

“We have an advantage, we believe, because most of these assets that we have caretaken in the past have been insurance-related,” Boal said. “You have to have risk management practices in place to protect those assets.” Because customers will seek increased capital preservation, “one of the strengths of this organization is understanding how to put a product together, how to structure the risk management,” he said. “We see a market that’s really crying out for this kind of product orientation.”

Aviva Investors expects to substantially increase its North American holdings to include real estate, fixed-income investments and equities over the next four or five years, Boal said. Additionally, the company plans to broaden its offerings in “alternative strategy” investments, such as hedge-fund-type investments for its institutional clients, “but we want to do that with due diligence and prudence,” he said.

Boal said Aviva Investors expects to hire between 40 and 50 additional employees, primarily investment and asset-management professionals, for its Des Moines headquarters by the end of 2009. Currently located in downtown Des Moines, Aviva USA is building a 360,000-square-foot headquarters campus at Jordan Creek and Mills Civic parkways in West Des Moines.

“Obviously, we’re very excited about this,” Boal said. “We think this is a very different value proposition.”