This morning, as you undoubtedly have seen from the release on the wire, we are pleased to announce that we have entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Convergent Capital Management, a Chicago-based company that over the past eight years has established majority ownership interests in eight asset management firms and minority interests in two others.
We are very pleased that we've reached this agreement with Convergent and very optimistic about the opportunity that this represents. This is not just one step but really multiple steps for us at this one time as we continue to fulfill our commitment to expand the asset management resources at City National Corporation.
This acquisition is consistent with City National's overall strategy for growth and our strategy for growing noninterest income, and it meets the standards that we've set out before with fit, focus and price criteria, whether in banks or asset management acquisitions.
As you may know, we acquired an external asset management firm, Reed, Conner and Birdwell, a little over two years ago, allowing it to function under its own brand name as an independent manager. The strategy of Convergent Capital Management has been remarkably similar, but it has been able to build up a larger collection—a more diversified collection—of affiliated asset management firms. And so in this way we're able to do in one transaction what might have taken us a number of years to do in a series of transactions, very reminiscent of what Convergent has done over these past eight years.
The addition of Convergent will obviously contribute to the growth in our revenue and the diversification of our noninterest income, taking the ratio of noninterest income at City National up from about 22% of total revenue to about 25%. In addition this acquisition will nearly double City National's assets under management to just under $14 billion.
Third, this acquisition facilitates the further growth of our asset management business by bringing a very talented management team to City National. CCM and its CEO, Rick Adler, and its Chief Operating Officer, Jon Hunt, will be joining us and have entered into long-term employment contracts. They have assembled and managed an effective platform to select, acquire, foster and hold successfully this diverse collection of strong, effectively independent asset management firms and we look forward to working with them to foster the further growth of CCM and its affiliates.
We also gained through CCM relationships with the firms and the talented investment professionals who run them, and we're very pleased about that as well.
As you may know we recently asked Vern Kozlen, who had run City National Investments for about seven years, to take on the duties of Director of Asset Management Development instead of his duties at CNI. This gives us a proven executive at City National who can take responsibility and will oversee our relationship with CCM.
We think this is an opportunity that fits with our stated goals and that the timing will work out well. Even in what has been a challenging market environment, CCM has performed well, growing revenues at a compound annual rate of about 19% from 1997 through 2002. Clearly if and when the financial markets improve there will be further opportunity, we believe, for growth.
