American Century closing Denver operation

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American Century closing Denver operation
Kansas City-based American Century Investments will shut down its Denver-area operation over the next year to 18 months, according to the company.

American Century spokesman Brian Spano in Kansas City confirmed the closing, but had no other details of the closure.

More than 200 employees at the mutual fund manager supposedly will be affected, according to an informed source. They got the news of the closing Sept. 17.

The company's metro-Denver office was headed by Scott Schleisman, according to the Denver Business Journal's April 25 list of largest area mutual fund companies.

American Century is the Denver area's ninth-largest mutual fund company with $71.2 million in total Colorado-based assets under management, according to the DBJ list.

American Century Investments, which has been in metro Denver since 1993, is headquartered in the ParkRidge Corporate Center office park at Interstate 25 and Lincoln Avenue. The company consolidated its 400 employees at the time in the new five-story, 160,000-square-foot ParkRidge Six building in the summer of 2001. The building also includes a customer-service center.

The mutual fund family was previously located at the Colorado Center office complex at South Colorado Boulevard and I-25.

American Century's Colorado client base has dwindled in recent years. The 36,000 local investors the company had in 1999 dipped to 30,000 in 2001.

American Century Investments is part of American Century Services Corp. of Kansas City. The 45-year-old parent company employs roughly 2,000 people and serves nearly 2 million investors. It manages $78 billion in assets through mutual funds, separate accounts and other vehicles.

In June 2003, American Century Investments transferred to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. a partnership between the two firms that managed $45.2 billion in assets and was called J.P. Morgan/American Century Retirement Plan Services. The new entity is called J.P. Morgan Retirement Plan Services.

Before the deal, American Century managed $7.5 billion of those assets and continued to after the ownership transfer. What's more, 700,000 American Century employees of the defunct Morgan/American Century partnership, including those in metro Denver, were supposed to remain with American Century.

J.P. Morgan bought a 45 percent equity state in American Century in 1998.