As case studies go, AMP provides a textbook example of how to turn a large business into a small business. This week the once great financial services group could unveil one of the final pieces in the dismantling of the financial conglomerate.

The downsizing of AMP has been a painfully slow and incremental process, marked by strategic missteps, poor judgement calls by various management regimes, ill-fated profligate acquisitions and scandals unearthed by the royal commission into financial services.

For many of those that have occupied its board and executive ranks AMP has been career poison. While those who took shares as part of the demutualisation more than 20 years ago, the stock has been cursed.

Over the last two decades AMP has lost more than 92 per cent of its value, much of its brand value and its prominence as a key pillar of the Australian financial system.

The company’s flagship funds management business - AMP Capital - will be sold in two separate transactions - the property arm is set to be hoovered up by Dexus for around $300 million, while the international infrastructure business is also earmarked for sale - with Apollo Global Management the likely buyer.

At the end of the process the smallish rump that remains of AMP will be a wealth management business with a much depleted group of financial advisers but a successful platform business, North. AMP will also retain its bank, which is arguably sub-scale.

AMP’s wealth business continued to experience funds outflows while the advice element operated at a loss, according to the most recent set of full-year accounts released in February 2022.

For several years now AMP has been operating in damage control - attempting strategies to place it on a firm financial footing.

It had several unsuccessful attempts to sell parts of the business and at one stage unsuccessfully courted the sale of the entire business.