Perhaps Invesco Janus Henderson will be the result of the next asset management mega merger, if Nelson Peltz has anything to say about it.

Nelson Peltz Trian Fund Management CEO, Founding Partner

This morning, Peltz's Trian Fund Management confirmed, via a pair of 13D filings with the SEC, revealing that the activist investing firm has accumulated stakes of 9.9 percent each in both Invesco Ltd and Janus Henderson Group PLC. The filings follow the Wall Street Journal reporting last night that the Trian team (of which Peltz is CEO and founding partner) envisions building Invesco into an even bigger asset manager by buying firms like Janus Handerson.

Other publications that picked up Trian's moves include Citywire, Reuters, and Seeking Alpha.

Those stakes in Invesco and Janus Henderson total about $900 million, the WSJ notes, and part of the money from a long-term Trian fund that's specifically focused on pushing consolidation in the asset management world.

The news of Trian's Janus Henderson and Invesco stakes comes two months after another big Trian asset management bet, Legg Mason, was acquired, as expected. The news also comes two years after the merger that created Janus Henderson and one year after Invesco acquired OpFunds.

The Trian team has already met with Richard Gillingwater (non-executive chairman of Janus Henderson), Marty Flanagan (president, CEO, and director of Invesco), and Allison Dukes (senior managing director and chief financial officer of Invesco), according to the filings. And those same filings confirm that the Trian team plans to talk to the fund firms' boards about M&A. Such M&A, per the filings, "may include companies" Trian holds or will hold stakes.

Shares in Atlanta-based Invesco (which now has a market cap of $5.561 billion and, as of August 31, AUM of $1.2458 trillion) closed at $11.25 yesterday down 34.2 percent year-to-date. Shares in London-based Janus Henderson (which now has a market cap of $4.611 billion and, as of June 30, AUM of $336.7 billion) closed at $21.60 yesterday, down 5.2 percent YTD. Shares in both firms are up today after the news of Trian's moves. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE