As finance organizations emerge from the recession with a renewed mandate to help their companies grow, many are not the same organization they were 18 months ago.

The finance organization inside BNY Mellon Asset Management is just such an organization. Having largely de-leveraged its balance sheet over the last 18 months, the investment firm’s asset management finance team is once again focused on helping to grow the firm’s 15 investment management boutiques. However, the bank’s effort to better manage costs — an initiative in part driven by the crisis — is forever changing the scale and shape of the firm’s global finance organization.

“We are going through a transformation and creating some accounting utilities, and where it’s appropriate we’re trying to create those utilities in lower cost locations,” said Steve Lipiner (pictured), CFO of BNY Mellon Asset Management. For its part, BNY Mellon has so far established its so-called accounting utilities model in three cities globally — Puna, India; Manchester, England; and Pittsburgh, Pa.

Meanwhile, BNY Mellon has made no secret of the fact that it expects growth to be largely driven by its international operations.

“The growth that we have experienced over the last few years has been from acquisitions done outside the United States,” explains Lipiner, who says the firm’s recent purchase of Insight Investment Management of London placed another $135 billion in assets under the firm’s management, allowing BNY Mellon’s total assets under management to grow to more than $1 trillion. ###