Almost 12 years after another huge asset management buy, an American higher education retirement plan giant is poised to gobble up another big fund firm: a 222-year-old British giant that straddles the Atlantic.

This morning, Bill Huffman, CEO of TIAA's Nuveen [profile], and Richard Oldfield, group chief executive of Schroders plc [profile], confirm that New York City-based Nuveen has agreed to pay about 9.9 billion pounds ($13.51 billion) in cash to buy all of London-based Schroders. Nuveen has about $1.4 trillion in AUM*, while Schroders has about $1.1 trillion*, so on a pro forma basis the deal would create a $2.5-trillion-AUM asset manager. (Thus, the price tag works out to about 2 percent of Schroders' AUM.)

The deal, already approved by both Schroders' and Nuveen's boards of directors, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, pending the approval of Schroders' shareholders and the blessing of regulators. BNP Paribas advised Nuveen on the deal, while Wells Fargo Securities International Limited, Barclays Bank, and J.P. Morgan Cazenove advised Schroders. Clifford Chance LLP provided legal counsel to Nuveen, and Slaughter and May did so for Schroders. The revelation of the deal apparently follows the signing, on January 25 (18 days ago) of a confidentiality agreement between Nuveen and Schroders.

Schroders currently has about 5,700 employees and 38 offices, and the two teams reveal that the deal would boost Nuveen to about 9,600 employees in total. The Nuveen folks have publicly committed to keeping Oldfield on as Schroders' CEO, reporting to Huffman and serving on the executive management team at Nuveen, with Schroders staying as its own standalone Nuveen arm for at least a year after the deal closes and with Nuveen not planning "any material reductions in the employee base of Schroders" for at least two years after the close. (The two sides have even committed to about $239 million in incentives to keep key Schroders employees on board.) The official plan is also for London to become the combined asset manager's non-U.S. headquarters.

"The Combined Group will bring together two successful firms with shared values and highly complementary strengths to create a new global leader in public-to-private investment management," states Elizabeth Corley, Schroders' chair. "Building on Schroders' heritage, London will remain at the heart of this enlarged business and the Transaction will deliver an attractive premium in cash to our shareholders, reflecting the value of our business and its future prospects. The board of Schroders is confident that this is the right step for our shareholders, clients and people."

The two teams present the deal as one of complementary reach. They note that, while 93.5 percent of Nuveen's AUM is in the Americas, only 12 percent of Schroders' AUM is there. Thus, the deal appears to be a boost for Nuveen in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, which accounts for 64 percent of Schroders' business) and APAC (Asia Pacific, which accounts for 25 percent of Schroders' business). Indeed, though Schroders has institutional asset management business (including DC I-O business) here in the U.S., the fund firm exited the retail U.S. mutual fund business a decade ago in favor of being a fund subadvisor while also offering its own institutional mutual funds.

"By bringing our complementary platforms, capabilities, distribution networks, and cultures together, we will create an extraordinary opportunity to enhance the way we serve our collective clients through access to new markets, bolstered product offerings, and deeper pools of investment talent," Huffman states. "This transaction is about unlocking new growth opportunities for wealth and institutional investors around the world by giving our leading, differentiated public-to-private platform a broader global presence."

Oldfield, for his part, describes the deal as a way to "significantly accelerate" growth plans at Schroders "to create a leading public-to-prive platform with enhanced geographic reach and a strengthened balance sheet."

"In a competitive landscape where scale can help deliver benefits, in Nuveen we see a partner that shares our values, respects the culture we have built and will create exciting opportunities for our clients and people," Oldfield states.

News of the impending Schroders-Nuveen deal also comes about a dozen years after TIAA's last transformational asset management deal, when it bought Nuveen from private equity in October 2014.

*As of December 31, 2025. 

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