American Century starting the process of closing its Denver-area operations center in Littleton, Colorado. The closing comes a little less than four months after the fund firm handed-off its retirement operations to JP Morgan Chase. The firm informed employees of its decision on September 17.

About 175 of the roughly 335 positions in the center involved the retirement operations. Those jobs were transfered to JP Morgan last summer. Now, the fund firm plans to relocate the remaining 145 phone rep and transaction processing jobs to its Kansas City headquarters over the next 18 months. Word of the move was first reported in in American Business Journals and picked up by both the Denver Post and Kansas City Star.

Fifteen positions in information technology, security and building service jobs will not be relocated. American Century plans to help those workers find other employment.

"As we work through this consolidation, our goal is to retain as many employees as possible," said William Lyons, American Century president and chief executive told the Denver Post. "We are sensitive to the impact this will have on the lives of our hard-working employees and hope that early notification of our plans will make the transition easier."

American Century designed the site as a back up operations center and at the peak of the stock market it employed roughly 500 people in a 160,000-square-foot, five-story building at 10350 Park Meadows Drive in Littleton's Park Ridge Corporate Center. The firm reportedly has 12 1/2 years remaining on the 15 year lease.

American Century's presence in Denver dates to 1993. The initial office was opened a small regional office by the Benham Group.  

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE