Nelson Peltz Says $7B Take-Private Bid Would Let Janus Henderson ‘De-Risk’

It’s what Paul McCartney might call “hands across the water,” the capitalist chapter, anyway. One of Wall Street’s most famous hedge fund captains has his sights set on one of London’s biggest asset managers.

Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management and venture capital firm General Catalyst offered to acquire the UK’s Janus Henderson at a roughly $7.2 billion valuation on Monday. Trian, which already owns 20.4% of the asset manager, said it would be better off as a private company. Janus Henderson, which oversees $457 billion of assets, plans to appoint a committee to consider the offer.

Global Sensitivities

In the press, Peltz is often referred to as “corporate raider” or “activist,” terms he expressly dislikes. The New York Times last year went with “longtime corporate agitator,” and there were certainly agitations when he called for strategic changes at Unilever and Disney. Peltz also helped oust Janus Henderson’s former CEO in 2022, but his new bid for the company goes further, calling for a reset as a private company. The case for this lies in Janus Henderson’s record. The product of a transatlantic marriage between Denver-based Janus Capital and London’s Henderson Group in 2017, the firm has been marked by uneven performance across the years, leading to the loss of clients. Moreover, in April, Janus Henderson shares lost more than a third of their value after the US government announced a slate of global tariffs, though they’ve since recovered. Trian and General Catalyst said their plan would “de-risk an investment that we believe is highly sensitive to capital market and geopolitical dynamics.” They also suggested accepting their offer would mean taking advantage of the year’s equity rally:

• Janus Henderson’s New York-listed shares rose 11.3% on Monday to a record $46.35, or 35 cents more than Peltz’s per-share offer. Before Monday’s surge, they were down roughly 2.5% on the year.
• Trian and General Catalyst wrote in a letter that, “free from the constraints of operating as a public company,” Janus Henderson would be able to make long-term investments in its products and technology more effectively. 

Private Matters: If the deal were approved, it would align with the trend of more companies opting to stay private or go private in recent years. Morningstar found that the median age of a company going public was 10.7 years in 2024, up from 6.9 years in 2014. Meanwhile, gaming giant Electronic Arts agreed to an unprecedented $55 billion take-private deal last month.