The two firms first announced their merger plans in October last year, as reported.
Concurrent with Henderson’s delisting from the London Stock Exchange, Janus Henderson will list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange today, according to the statement. It will also trade on the Australian Securities Exchange from 13 June.
The firm will market its products and services as Janus Henderson Investors, with immediate effect.
The new firm manages around $331bn in global assets, with a market capitalisation of around $6bn, according to the statement.
No major changes
Rob Adams, Janus Henderson’s Asia-Pacific head, told FSA at the time of the merger announcement last year that the newly-merged firm might keep its investment teams as two franchises.
“Because of the different investment styles, there might well be circumstances in which we have strong franchises in the same area. And we are comfortable maintaining two franchises,” he said.
However, no major changes to the investment teams in Asia are expected, according to a Singapore-based spokesman. The firm is “now quite satisfied with the current arrangement.
“We will review and revise our hiring as needed. But for now we are satisfied that our current line-up is more than sufficiently shaped to deliver performance,” he said.
Janus Henderson distributes 35 funds in Hong Kong and 25 in Singapore, according to the firm’s website. In Asia-Pacific, the firm also has business operations in China, Australia, Japan, India and Taiwan.
Key departures
Henderson saw several departures following the public statement of the merger as competitors made announcements in February that they were hiring key senior staff.
In London, Matthew Beesley, Henderson’s former head of global equities, left the firm and joined GAM in March as its head of equities, according to a GAM statement.
Schroders announced that it hired Chris Paine as a fund manager for its global income portfolio management team, which is part of the firm’s multi-asset investments team. Paine was previously a director of research for multi-asset at Henderson, a role he assumed in 2012.
T Rowe Price said that it will acquire Henderson’s US high yield fixed income fund and portfolio team. The team is comprised of Kevin Loome, who is the fund manager of the Henderson High Yield Opportunities Fund, four analysts and a trader. The acquisition of the team was expected to be completed in May, with the fund renamed as T Rowe Price US High Yield Fund.
Merging for scale
Both Henderson and Janus highlighted the need for scale following their announcement of the merger plans.
Over the longer term, the economies of scale that the combined group can achieve are likely to deliver between 2 and 3 percentage points of additional net new money than they would have been able to do individually, Andrew Formica, Janus Henderson’s co-CEO (previously Henderson’s CEO), said in a conference call following the announcement.
“It has become harder to be able to invest in the business for future growth, as some of the more mandatory requirements, driven by regulatory change, have eaten into any budget you would have in that,” Formica said separately in a PwC report.
“Janus Henderson is about getting back that ability to give us sufficient scale to meet our regulatory and mandatory responsibilities to our clients and the investments we need to make,” he said.
Asset management firms globally are facing dwindling sales, rising costs and fee pressures. Those difficulties have made the industry’s CEOs look at strategic alliances or joint ventures, or plot M&A with other firms.
Besides the Janus Henderson merger, Aberdeen Asset Management and Standard Life announced in March their discussions for a union. When merged, the combined group’s AUM will be around $700bn.
Both firms expect the merger to bring scale and drive greater operational efficiency, they said in a statement. Early this month, both firms elaborated on its discussions, with plans to make massive job cuts during a three-year integration period. The renamed investment group is expected to be called Aberdeen Standard Life Investments.
Another deal, which is expected to be completed in the first half of this year, is Amundi’s purchase of Pioneer Investments. The deal will place Amundi at number one for AUM in France and among the top three asset managers in Italy, the firm said.
