The Berger Funds trustees have voted to move the fund firm's assets to sister firm Janus Capital, formally dashing the hopes of American Century, Turner and Fred Alger to acquire the more than $1 billion in growth assets at Berger. Yesterday's vote to move the 13 funds was predicted last week in this space.

Janus also revealed that it will purchase a 30 percent stake in Perkins Wolf McDonnell & Co., a Chicago-based asset manager that holds a two subadvisory mandates from Berger funds. All together the firm manages roughly $5 billion for the Berger Small Cap Value Fund and Berger Mid Cap Value Fund products as well as institutional accounts.

"Adding the value funds to our lineup is an important step toward achieving our goal of offering investors best-of-breed products across complementary investment disciplines," said Mark Whiston, CEO-designate at Janus. "During the last 22 years, Perkins, Wolf, McDonnell has distinguished itself as one of the premier small and mid cap value shops in the industry and we look forward to offering their expertise to investors."

The Berger trustee's confirmed that they considered bids for the value assets from some of the nation's "largest managers" but did not identify which firms submitted the bids. All together, Berger claims more than $15 billion in assets under management.

Janus will take over control of the Berger growth funds next week (December 16) and will assume other management functions over the next few months. Janus expects to gain shareholder approval is expected at the funds' annual meeting in March.

Janus plans to launch small and mid cap value funds for its Janus Adviser Series and Janus Aspen Series fund families on December 31. The funds will be subadvised by affiliates Bay Isle Financial and Perkins Wolf. Jakob Holm and William Schaff of Bay Isle Financial will manage the small cap value product and Thomas Perkins, Robert Perkins and Jeffery Kautz of Perkins Wolf will manage a new mid-cap value product. 

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