American Century Investments expects to finalize in the next few days a private placement debt offering that will give it the funding for planned purchases of two asset managers specializing in quantitative equity and fixed-income strategies, respectively, CEO Jonathan Thomas said in an interview.
Because the private placement deal is not complete, Mr. Thomas declined to disclose the exact amount the Kansas City, Mo., money manager is looking to raise.
The potential acquisitions would be the first in more than 20 years for American Century, which has $168 billion under management and is primarily known as an equity and fixed-income asset manager. Forty-four percent of American Century's AUM is institutional.
Mr. Thomas said the current environment is a good time to acquire firms given that multiples paid for money managers are at historic lows and distribution has become more difficult for smaller managers.
"There is a tremendous amount of dislocation going on in the industry," he said. "All of those things have combined to create an interesting opportunity for us to add scale and capabilities."
Mr. Thomas hopes the acquisitions could happen within the next several months but is not wedded to a specific date.
More than half of American Century's AUM is invested in U.S. active equity strategies.
The firm's largest equity strategy is global growth, with $16.3 billion managed primarily in separate accounts for sovereign wealth funds and other large institutional investors, said American Century spokesman Chris Doyle. The strategy has topped its benchmark, the MSCI All Country World index, for the one-, three- and five-year periods ended June 30, company data show.