A $327-billion-AUM firm's $1.7-billion-AUM mutual fund family is going to merge into a sister fund family later this year, pending approval from shareholders.

Michael "Mike" Freno Barings CEO

On Monday, Mike Fanning, head of MassMutual [profile] in the U.S., and Mike Freno, chairman and president/CEO of Barings (a MassMutual subsidiary), confirmed that the MassMutual team plans to consolidate Barings' mutual fund family into the MassMutual Funds family. The deal is expected to close in Q4.

Barings already subadvises $6.6 billion within the MassMutual Funds (a largely subadvised fund family), and MassMutual will keep Barings on as subadvisor for the consolidated funds. Of Barings' funds, one (the Barings Diversified Income Fund) will be liquidated, two (the Barings Active Short Duration Bond Fund and the Barings U.S. High Yield Fund) will be merged into existing funds (the MassMutual Short-Duration Bond Fund and the MassMutual High Yield Fund, respectively), and four (the Barings Global Floating Rate Fund, the Barings Global Credit Income Opportunities Fund, the Barings Emerging Markets Debt Blended Total Return Fund, and the Barings Global Emerging Markets Equity Fund) will be transformed into new, MassMutual-branded funds (the MassMutual Global Floating Rate Fund, the MassMutual Global Credit Income Opportunities Fund, the MassMutual Emerging Markets Debt Blended Total Return Fund, and the MassMutual Global Emerging Markets Equity Fund). Once the deal is done, MassMutual Funds will have 115 funds with about $69 billion in combined AUM.

"Barings remains committed to the U.S. wealth market and this consolidation gives us the opportunity to continue to provide our asset management capabilities in this channel while pivoting our distribution efforts to focus on bringing our alternative products to wealth investors," Freno states. 

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