Janus Capital Group

Janus Capital Group, Inc. is a public company headquartered in Denver, CO, US. It was founded in 1969 by Thomas H. Bailey as a subsidiary of Kansas City Southern Industries. It provides growth and risk-managed investment strategies.

As of June 30, 2008, Janus manages $191.8 billion in assets for more than four million shareholders, clients and institutions around the globe. Outside the U.S., Janus has offices in London, Milan, Tokyo and Hong Kong, Melbourne and Singapore. Janus Capital Group consists of Janus Capital Management LLC, and Enhanced Investment Technologies, LLC (INTECH). In addition, Janus Capital Group owns 30% of Perkins, Wolf, McDonnell and Company, LLC.

ubsidiaries

Janus Capital Management LLC

Janus Capital Management is one of the largest equity managers in the U.S. For more than three decades the Denver-based firm has used a bottom-up, company-by-company investment approach based on the conviction that stock prices ultimately follow earnings growth. In addition to growth, core and international equity funds, Janus offers balanced, specialty fixed-income and money market funds. Janus Capital Management is a wholly owned subsidiary.

2003 Mutual Fund Scandal

Janus was implicated in the 2003 Mutual-fund scandal. On August 18, 2004, the SEC announced that JCM would pay $262 million [http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/ia-2277.htm] [http://securities.stanford.edu/news-archive/2004/20040428_Settlement03_OsterLauricella.htm] . This includes $100 million in disgorgements and penalties. [http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-111.htm] JCM also consented to a cease-and-desist order and a censure, and to undertake compliance and mutual-fund governance reforms.

The SEC concluded that JCM negotiated market timing agreements with 12 entities. Simultaneously, prospectuses for the funds stated that JCM did not permit frequent trading or market timing in these funds. Furthermore, some of these agreements included the understanding that the market timer would make long-term investments, so-called "sticky assets," in certain Janus mutual funds. JCM would then waive all redemption fees that would have normally been assessed against the market timers for their frequent trades. These frequent trades caused dilution to the affected mutual funds. This financially benefited JCM in that JCM realized additional advisory fees from the timed funds and "sticky assets". This constituted a conflict of interest, and by failing to disclose the conflict of interest to the Board of Trustees and the shareholders of the affected mutual funds, JCM breached their fiduciary duty to the mutual funds. [http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2004-111.htm] In the agreement, JCM neither admits nor denies these findings. On July 30, 2006 the SEC accused three former executives of JCM of improperly allowing market timing of Janus mutual funds. The accused are Warren Lammert, manager of the Janus Mercury Fund from 1993 to 2003, Lars Soderberg, executive vice president and managing director of institutional services from 2003 to 2004, and Lance Newcomb, an institutional sales manager. [http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2006-08-01-janus_x.htm] [http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/07/31/sec_accuses_3_former_janus_execs_in_trading_deals/?rss_id=Boston.com+--+Massachusetts+news] [http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2006/07/31/daily21.html]

A Janus spokesman, Blair Johnson, stated "it's a matter between the SEC and former Janus employees, not the company," and that "Janus resolved its regulatory issues more than two years ago, and we've moved on." A hearing was held in October and November 2007, but the SEC's administrative law judge has not yet issued a decision. [http://sec.gov/litigation/admin/2007/33-8877a.pdf]

External links

* [http://www.janus.com/ Corporate homepage]