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American Century Hires TCW, Loomis For Subadvising
The wire story asserts that (per SEC filings) American Century is hiring Loomis Sayles to subadvise American Century Growth Fund (TWCGX), and that Am Cent currently offers a fund, "PIMCO Mortgage-backed Securities Fund", which will become "TCW Core Plus Bond Fund".
So many strange things here:
- SEC site doesn't have a recent filing for TWCGX showing a management change (Shadow?)
- American Century already has its own Core Plus Bond Fund (ACCNX), why would it change a mortgage fund to a different type fund that duplicated a current offering?
- I can't find any mortgage-backed fund on Am Century's site (closest is its GNMA fund)
I also thought that American Century didn't outsource day-to-day management of its funds, but I was wrong about that. A little searching turned up Am Cent Int'l Value (ACEVX), which used to be subadvised by Templeton Investments (subsidiary of Franklin Resources).
Someone is having a bad day - just wondering whether it is me or MFWire?
That is a good guess, and I'll look into it further, but so far I have my doubts.
Several years ago, Am Cent tried going mostly load - adding A,B,C shares, closing investor class shares of many funds. They used to show all the classes on their website - I didn't notice until you pointed it out that they don't show info on these advisor share classes now.
Still no luck. American Century also offers funds designed for annuities (which could easily show up in retirement plans). Here's their list of "Variable Portfolio" (VP) funds, still no luck: https://www.americancentury.com/funds/vp_fund_reports.jsp
Okay, here's the answer - VA was the right idea, and MFWire doesn't seem to understand fund structures.
Columbia Funds (not American Century) offers a set of variable annuity funds; as the manager of those funds, it (Columbia, not AC) is responsible for selecting the subadvisors.
Columbia, not AC, fired American Century and hired Loomis Sayles. Columbia, not AC, fired PIMCO and hired TCW.
Here's the prospectus that's being modified. Note that Columbia Management is the manager of VP - Am Century Growth Fund; American Century is the subadviser. Likewise, Columbia is the manager of VP - PIMCO Mortgage-Backed Securities fund; PIMCO is the subadviser.
Reply to @msf: It took a little while but I found the SEC filing listed above from MFwire as it is under Variable Insurance products (not my usual haunt when looking for filings). For some reason it came up under Columbia Funds Variable Series Trust II.
Comments
The wire story asserts that (per SEC filings) American Century is hiring Loomis Sayles to subadvise American Century Growth Fund (TWCGX), and that Am Cent currently offers a fund, "PIMCO Mortgage-backed Securities Fund", which will become "TCW Core Plus Bond Fund".
So many strange things here:
- SEC site doesn't have a recent filing for TWCGX showing a management change (Shadow?)
- American Century already has its own Core Plus Bond Fund (ACCNX), why would it change a mortgage fund to a different type fund that duplicated a current offering?
- PIMCO Mortgage-backed Securities Fund is the exact name of a fund offered (not subadvised) by PIMCO (PTRIX, PTMDX)
- I can't find any mortgage-backed fund on Am Century's site (closest is its GNMA fund)
I also thought that American Century didn't outsource day-to-day management of its funds, but I was wrong about that. A little searching turned up Am Cent Int'l Value (ACEVX), which used to be subadvised by Templeton Investments (subsidiary of Franklin Resources).
Someone is having a bad day - just wondering whether it is me or MFWire?
Several years ago, Am Cent tried going mostly load - adding A,B,C shares, closing investor class shares of many funds. They used to show all the classes on their website - I didn't notice until you pointed it out that they don't show info on these advisor share classes now.
But I did (after your pointing it out) locate a page that shows all the share classes of their funds: https://www3.financialtrans.com/tf/FANWeb?tx=Disclaim&cz=c001204170802001302041319
Still no luck. American Century also offers funds designed for annuities (which could easily show up in retirement plans). Here's their list of "Variable Portfolio" (VP) funds, still no luck: https://www.americancentury.com/funds/vp_fund_reports.jsp
Most VA "funds" aren't even registered with the SEC, since they're regulated as insurance products, not securities. But these do seem to be registered and have tickers, e.g. VP Balanced Fund is AVBIX. See, e.g. this Morningstar search for the funds:
http://quote.morningstar.com/TickerLookupResult.html?ticker=American+Century+VP&pageno=0&TLC=M
Since MFwire says these changes were filed with the SEC, I did a search on American Century companies. 586 funds/share classes returned - no mortgage, no core plus, no PIMCO, no TCW. Here's that search result:
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/series?sc=companyseries&type=N-PX&company=American+Century
Here's the SEC search for any fund containing "mortage backed" (with or without hyphen), still nothing related to American Century:
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/series?sc=companyseries&type=N-PX&company=Mortgage-backed
Maybe there are other "funds" offered through employer plans. But there's nothing (as near as I can see) that the SEC knows about.
Columbia Funds (not American Century) offers a set of variable annuity funds; as the manager of those funds, it (Columbia, not AC) is responsible for selecting the subadvisors.
Columbia, not AC, fired American Century and hired Loomis Sayles.
Columbia, not AC, fired PIMCO and hired TCW.
SEC filing that MFWire discovered:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1413032/000119312514053327/d675282d497.htm
Here's the prospectus that's being modified. Note that Columbia Management is the manager of VP - Am Century Growth Fund; American Century is the subadviser. Likewise, Columbia is the manager of VP - PIMCO Mortgage-Backed Securities fund; PIMCO is the subadviser.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1413032/000119312513186015/d506451d485bpos.htm
Here is the page with the 2/14/14 filing 497:
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?CIK=C000087788&action=getcompany&scd=filings
Thanks! It seems I found this just about when you did. MFWire botched their story (see my post below). These are, as you discovered, Columbia funds.
A lesson I learned - look at the normal (non-print) version of pages before struggling to find docs. The normal pages sometimes contain links.
The MFWire story contained a link to the SEC filing. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I (and you) had found the filing ourselves.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1413032/000119312514053327/d675282d497.htm
Assume The Position;