A niche asset management acquisition is falling through, and it looks a big asset management divestment isn't in the cards either.

David C. Brown Victory Capital Holdings, Inc. Chairman, CEO

Victory Capital Management will no longer be acquiring Harvest Volatility Management, Victory CEO David Brown confirmed yesterday after the market closed. Brown also confirmed that a much bigger deal, Victory's planned acquisition of USAA Asset Management Company, is on track to close on July 1.

The Victory team blames "recent adverse market conditions" hitting Harvey's biggest strategy as the reason for the collapse of the deal, which was initially unveiled last September. (When the deal was first unveiled, Harvest had about $12 billion in AUM.)

Meanwhile, it sounds like a beleaguered, publicly traded, multinational banking giant is not going to be exiting the asset management business any time soon. Jonathan Weiss, senior executive vice president and head of Wells Fargo's wealth and investment management division, tells Pensions & Investments that, though the bank is selling its retirement plan recordkeeping business, it's standing by Wells Fargo Asset Management.

"There's a lot of reasons that we like the business and we're not looking to sell it," Weiss tells the publication. "We think it has scale. We think it has synergies with the rest of our wealth business."

"It's an intellectual capital business, and we like that," Weiss adds. "It's profitable." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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