A mutually owned insurer's team is putting more chips on a $1.5314-trillion-AUM (as of February 28), publicly traded asset manager.

Martin L. "Marty" Flanagan Invesco President and CEO

Since last Friday, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co (dba MassMutual) has bought more than 4.1 million shares of Invesco [profile], according to a filing with the SEC. Marty Flanagan, president and CEO of Invesco, confirms that the purchases pushed MassMutual's Invesco stake up from 16.4 percent to 17.3 percent. (At Invesco's market cap of $9.18 billion, that translates into a $1.588-billion stake.)

"We have a strong strategic relationship with MassMutual, including its commitment of more than $1 billion to various Invesco alternatives strategies, which has helped increase the speed at which we can launch new products for the benefit of our clients," Flanagan wrote yesterday in a LinkedIn post. "Earlier this year, Invesco resumed share repurchases, reflecting our confidence in the future of our business and the industry."

(Flanagan and nine other senior Invesco execs also upped their stakes in the company last week, according to other filings. One decreased his stake.)

MassMutual's move comes after representatives of another big Invesco shareholder left Invesco's board last month and joined the board of another publicly traded fund firm.

MassMutual became Invesco's single biggest shareholder about three years ago as part of Invesco's purchase of MassMutual's OppenheimerFunds subsidiary. When that deal closed in May 2019, MassMutual held a 15.7-percent stake in Invesco. A year and a half later, MassMutual gained another Invesco board seat. 

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