Asset-Management M&A Hits Record in 2025 as Janus Henderson Agrees to $7.4 Billion Take-Private

The phone call came just before dawn in London and late the night before in Denver. On Dec. 22, 2025, the board of Janus Henderson Group agreed to hand the 50-year-old active asset manager to a consortium led by activist investor Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management and venture firm General Catalyst in a $7.4 billion take-private deal.

The agreement capped a five-year campaign by Trian, which had pressed the firm to cut costs and sharpen its strategy. It also marked something larger: one of the highest-profile transactions in what has become a record-breaking year of consolidation across the U.S. asset-management industry.

A record year for consolidation

U.S. asset managers announced or completed about $38 billion of mergers and acquisitions across 378 transactions in 2025, the highest annual deal value on record and the most deals since at least 1980, according to data compiled by Dealogic and published by the Financial Times on Jan. 5. The total was more than double the value recorded in 2024.

The flurry of activity reflects mounting pressure on the business of managing other people’s money. Firms are contending with thinner margins, relentless fee competition from low-cost index funds, rising spending on technology and artificial intelligence, and higher regulatory and compliance burdens. A series of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in late 2024 and 2025 also made debt-financed deals cheaper to fund.

“Asset managers are grappling with structurally lower revenue growth and structurally higher costs,” said one senior consultant who advises North American fund companies. “For many mid-sized firms, the math no longer works without either getting much bigger or finding a specialized niche.”

By several measures, the economics of the industry have deteriorated. North American asset managers’ pretax operating margins fell to roughly 32% in 2023, down from about 39% in 2021, as revenues stagnated and expenses rose, according to industry surveys. Cost lines for technology, investment staff and distribution have each been growing faster than overall revenues, leaving many firms with less room to absorb shocks.

At the same time, investor money has continued to gravitate toward lower-cost products. Flows have favored index-tracking mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, as well as cheaper fixed-income strategies, while higher-fee active equity funds have often suffered outflows. That has put particular strain on mid-tier active managers with large traditional mutual fund franchises.

Those pressures help explain why executives and boards turned so readily to the deal table in 2025. The transactions ranged from strategic mergers for scale between traditional fund houses to roll-ups of boutique managers backed by private equity sponsors, and from alternative-asset deals to cross-border acquisitions by foreign banks.

Janus Henderson: an activist- and tech-led take-private

In the Janus Henderson deal, Trian and General Catalyst agreed to pay $49 a share in cash, representing an 18% premium to the stock price before Trian publicly floated its proposal in October. Trian, which already owned about 20.6% of the company, is rolling its existing stake into the new private entity.

Janus Henderson chief executive Ali Dibadj called the transaction “a strong affirmation of our long-term strategy” and said the partnership would allow the firm to “increase investments in our products, client service, technology and talent to accelerate our growth,” according to the company’s announcement.

Peltz said Janus Henderson had “untapped potential,” while General Catalyst chief executive Hemant Taneja emphasized plans to use artificial intelligence to improve operations and the customer experience. The deal, expected to close in mid-2026 subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals, will take one of the better-known mid-sized active managers off public markets and into the hands of an activist- and technology-led consortium.

A race to build alternatives: Rithm buys Crestline

If Janus Henderson’s sale illustrates the squeeze on traditional stock pickers, other deals highlight a race to bulk up in alternative assets.

In September, New York-based Rithm Capital Corp., a former mortgage real estate investment trust that has been repositioning as a diversified alternative asset manager, agreed to acquire Crestline Management, a private credit and opportunistic investment firm founded in 1997 and based in Fort Worth, Texas. Crestline managed about $17 billion in assets at the time of the deal, focused on private credit, opportunistic credit and fund liquidity solutions, and operated affiliated insurance and reinsurance entities.

Rithm did not disclose the purchase price. When the transaction closed on Dec. 1, the company said the combined platform — including Rithm’s on-balance-sheet investments and assets managed through its Sculptor Capital unit and Crestline — oversaw about $102 billion in investable assets.

Michael Nierenberg, Rithm’s chairman, chief executive and president, described the Crestline acquisition as a “significant milestone in Rithm’s evolution” and said it “solidifies Rithm as a differentiated global asset management business.” Crestline’s founder and chief executive, Douglas Bratton, said joining Rithm would provide “the platform, resources and entrepreneurial spirit needed to accelerate our growth.”

The Rithm-Crestline tie-up underscores a broader trend. As institutional and wealthy individual investors search for yield and diversification outside public markets, managers have poured into private credit, infrastructure, real estate and other alternative strategies. Buying existing platforms offers a faster route than building from scratch.

Cross-border reshuffling: Nomura takes Macquarie’s public funds arm

Cross-border and “inter-sector” deals are also reshaping who owns asset managers. In April, Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan’s largest brokerage and investment bank, agreed to buy the North American and European public investments business of Macquarie Asset Management, the funds arm of Australia’s Macquarie Group, for $1.8 billion in cash.

The business, run largely out of Philadelphia with operations in Kansas City, Vienna and Luxembourg, managed about $180 billion in assets in equities, fixed income and multi-asset strategies and generated around $700 million in net management fees. More than 700 employees were due to transfer to Nomura as part of the deal, which was completed later in the year.

Nomura said the acquisition would lift assets under management in its investment management division from roughly $590 billion to about $770 billion and increase the share of that division’s revenues earned outside Japan. Chief executive Kentaro Okuda called asset management “a key strategic growth priority” and described the deal as “transformational” for the firm’s presence in the United States and Europe.

For Macquarie, the sale is part of a deliberate pivot. Ben Way, group head of Macquarie Asset Management, said the transaction would allow the unit to focus on being “a more focused, leading, global private markets alternatives business,” while retaining a full-service public and private asset-management offering in Australia. Under a broader partnership, Nomura will distribute Macquarie’s alternative funds to U.S. wealth clients and provide seed capital for new strategies.

Big bets, mixed results

Despite the surge in activity and the confident language accompanying many announcements, the historical record of asset-management mergers is mixed. Studies of large deals over the past decade show that fewer than 40% improved the combined firm’s cost-to-income ratio three years after closing. Roughly half experienced net outflows as clients pulled money or reallocated to other providers.

Common pitfalls include culture clashes, departures of key portfolio managers and sales teams, and the technical difficulty of integrating trading, risk and reporting systems without disrupting client service. Executives often overestimate the synergies from consolidating funds and back-office operations, analysts say.

Even so, consultants and industry executives broadly expect the consolidation to continue. Forecasts by major investment banks and advisory firms suggest the number of “significant” mergers and acquisitions in asset and wealth management could reach 250 to 350 transactions a year globally by the end of the decade, up from just over 100 in 2019. Some estimates indicate that as many as one in five existing firms may be acquired between 2025 and 2029.

What it means for investors, workers, and regulators

For investors and retirement savers, a more concentrated industry carries both potential benefits and risks. Larger firms may be better able to invest in technology, data and risk management, and in some cases could pass on economies of scale through lower fund expense ratios. At the same time, a shrinking roster of independent managers could reduce product diversity and strengthen the market power of a handful of global providers.

Consolidation also has consequences for workers and financial centers. Overlaps in operations, legal, compliance and distribution functions can lead to job losses or relocations in cities such as Denver, Philadelphia, Fort Worth, London and New York. Demand is expected to grow, however, for specialists in artificial intelligence, data analytics and product development, as well as for client-facing staff who can sell more complex offerings.

Regulators are watching the changes closely. While asset managers do not take deposits or make loans like banks, the concentration of assets and voting power in fewer institutions, and their increasing involvement in private credit and insurance-related structures, has been a recurring topic in global financial stability debates. Large cross-border acquisitions involving banks, insurers, sovereign wealth funds and alternative-asset sponsors add layers of regulatory complexity.

For now, the record tally of 2025 stands as a snapshot of an industry in transition. Faced with shrinking margins and rising fixed costs, many asset managers have concluded that size, diversification or a specialized edge are no longer optional. As deals like Janus Henderson’s take-private, Rithm’s purchase of Crestline and Nomura’s acquisition of Macquarie’s public funds arm show, the path forward increasingly runs through the mergers and acquisitions market — even if the outcome of that gamble will only become clear years after the ink has dried.