Legg Mason, Inc. operates as an asset management company. Acting through its subsidiaries, the company provides investment management and related services to institutional and individual clients, company-sponsored mutual funds, and other pooled investment vehicles.
The company offers these products and services directly and through various financial intermediaries. It provides its asset management services through asset managers, each of which markets its products and services under its own bra...
Legg Mason, Inc. operates as an asset management company. Acting through its subsidiaries, the company provides investment management and related services to institutional and individual clients, company-sponsored mutual funds, and other pooled investment vehicles.
The company offers these products and services directly and through various financial intermediaries. It provides its asset management services through asset managers, each of which markets its products and services under its own brand name and, in various cases, distributes retail products and services through a centralized retail distribution network.
Operating from asset management offices located in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries worldwide, its businesses provide an array of investment management products and services. The company offers these products and services directly and through various financial intermediaries. Its investment advisory services include discretionary and non-discretionary management of separate investment accounts in various investment styles for institutional and individual investors. The company’s investment products include proprietary mutual funds ranging from money market and other liquidity products to fixed income and equity funds managed in a wide variety of investment styles. The company also offers other domestic and offshore funds to both retail and institutional investors and funds-of-hedge funds.
Asset Managers
The company’s asset managers provide a range of separate account investment management services to institutional clients, including pension and other retirement plans, corporations, insurance companies, endowments and foundations and governments, and to high net worth individuals and families. In addition, its asset managers also sponsor and manage various groups of U.S. mutual funds, including the Legg Mason Funds, The Royce Funds and the Western Asset Funds, funds-of-hedge funds and various proprietary equity, fixed income, liquidity and balanced funds that are domiciled and distributed in countries worldwide, and provides investment advisory services to retail separately managed account programs.
Western Asset Management Company (Western Asset) is a fixed income asset manager for institutional clients. Headquartered in Pasadena, California, Western Asset's operations include investment operations in New York City, the United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, Australia and Singapore. Western Asset offers a range of products spanning the yield curve and encompassing the world's major bond markets, including a suite of limited duration and core products, emerging market and high yield portfolios, municipal portfolios and various sector-oriented and global products. Among the services Western Asset provides are management of separate accounts and management of mutual funds, closed-end funds, international funds and other structured investment products.
ClearBridge Investments is an equity asset management firm based in New York City that also has an office in San Francisco, California. ClearBridge Investments provides asset management services to 28 of the equity funds (including balanced funds and closed-end funds) in the Legg Mason Funds, to retail separately managed account programs, to certain of its international funds and, primarily through separate accounts, to institutional clients. ClearBridge also sub-advises domestic mutual funds that are sponsored by third parties. ClearBridge offers a diverse array of investment styles and disciplines, designed to address a range of investment objectives. Significant ClearBridge investment styles include large-cap growth and core equity management. In managing assets, ClearBridge utilizes a bottom-up, research intensive, fundamental approach to security selection that seeks to identify companies with the potential to provide solid economic returns relative to their risk-adjusted valuations.
Brandywine Global Investment Management (Brandywine) manages fixed income, including global and international fixed income, and equity portfolios for institutional and, through wrap accounts, high net worth individual clients. Brandywine, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, pursues a value investing approach in its management of both equity and fixed income assets.
Royce & Associates is the investment advisor to all of The Royce Funds and to certain of its international funds. In addition, Royce & Associates manages other pooled and separate accounts, primarily institutional. Headquartered in New York City, Royce & Associates invests in smaller company stocks, using a value approach. Royce & Associates' stock selection process seeks to identify companies with strong balance sheets and the ability to generate free cash flow.
Permal Group, Ltd. (Permal) is a global funds-of-hedge funds management firm. With its headquarters in London and other offices in New York City, Boston, Dubai, Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Nassau, Permal manages products, which include both directional and absolute return strategies, and are available through multi-manager and single manager funds, separately managed accounts and structured products sponsored by several large financial institutions. During the year 2013, the company acquired the Fauchier Partners business, which is being combined with the business of Permal.
Batterymarch Financial Management (Batterymarch) manages U.S., international and emerging markets equity portfolios for institutional clients. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Batterymarch primarily uses a quantitative approach to asset management. The firm's investment process for U.S. and international portfolios, other than emerging market portfolios, is designed to enhance the fundamental investment disciplines by using quantitative tools to process fundamental data.
Legg Mason Investment Counsel & Trust Company, National Association is a national banking association with authority to exercise trust powers. Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, Legg Mason Investment Counsel & Trust Company provides services as a trustee for trusts established by its individual and employee benefit plan clients and manages fixed income and equity assets. Legg Mason Investment Counsel, LLC, a subsidiary of Legg Mason Investment Counsel & Trust Company, manages equity, fixed income and balanced portfolios for high net worth individual and institutional clients and several of its proprietary mutual funds. Legg Mason Investment Counsel is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, and operates out of offices in New York City, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Easton, Maryland, and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Legg Mason Capital Management is an equity asset management business based in Baltimore, Maryland, that manages both institutional separate accounts and mutual funds. Legg Mason Capital Management manages four Legg Mason Funds, and also sub-advises the mutual fund managed by the joint venture, and investment products sponsored by its other subsidiaries, including certain of its international funds.
Legg Mason Australian Equities is an Australian asset management business that offers Australian equity products, Australian property trusts and asset allocation products. The company and one of its employees each own 50% of a consolidated joint venture subsidiary that serves as investment manager of one equity fund, Legg Mason Opportunity Trust, within the Legg Mason Funds family.
Esemplia Emerging Markets is an emerging markets equities investment manager. Headquartered in London and with an office in Hong Kong, Esemplia offers a range of portfolio management strategies, including core long-only and alpha-extension portfolios, to institutional investors around the world, including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. Esemplia has a disciplined, systematic and fundamental-based investment process with an integrated, top-down (via country strategy) and bottom-up (via stock and sector) equity security selection process.
Private Capital Management manages equity assets for high net worth individuals and families, institutions, endowments and foundations in separate accounts and through limited partnerships.
Legg Mason Poland engages in portfolio management, servicing and distribution of both separate account management services and local funds in Poland. Based in Warsaw, the firm provides portfolio management services primarily for equity assets to institutions, including corporate pension plans and insurance companies, and, through funds distributed through banks and insurance companies and individual investors.
United States Mutual Funds
The company’s U.S. mutual funds business primarily consists of three groups of proprietary mutual and closed-end funds, the Legg Mason Funds, The Royce Funds and the Western Asset Funds. The Legg Mason Funds invest in a range of domestic and international equity and fixed income securities utilizing a number of different investment styles, and also include several money market funds. The Royce Funds invest primarily in smaller-cap company stocks using a value investment approach. The Western Asset Funds invest primarily in fixed income securities.
The Legg Mason Funds consist of 110 mutual funds and 26 closed-end funds in the United States, all of which are sub-advised by its subsidiary asset managers. The mutual funds and closed-end funds within the Legg Mason Funds include 66 equity funds (including balanced funds) that invest in a spectrum of equity securities utilizing various investment styles, including large- and mid-cap growth funds and international funds. The fixed income and liquidity mutual funds and closed-end funds within the Legg Mason Funds include 70 funds that offer a similarly variety of investment strategies and objectives, including income funds, investment grade funds and municipal securities funds.
The Royce Funds consist of 31 mutual funds and 3 closed-end funds, most of which invest primarily in smaller-cap company stocks using a value approach. The funds differ in their approach to investing in smaller or micro-cap companies and the universe of securities from which they can select. The Royce Funds are distributed through non-affiliated fund supermarkets, its centralized funds distribution operations, non-affiliated wrap programs, and direct distribution. In addition, two of the portfolios in The Royce Funds are distributed only through insurance companies.
The company’s mutual funds business also includes the Western Asset Funds, a proprietary family of nine mutual funds and two closed-end funds. The mutual funds are marketed primarily to institutional investors and retirement plans through its institutional funds marketing group. Western Asset Management Company manages these funds using a team approach under the supervision of Western Asset's investment committee. The funds primarily invest in fixed income securities.
International Funds
Outside the United States, the company manages, supports, and distributes various proprietary funds across an array of global fixed income, liquidity and equity investment strategies. The company’s international funds include a range of cross border funds that are domiciled in Ireland and Luxembourg and are sold in countries across Asia, Europe and Latin America. The company’s international funds also include local fund ranges that are available for distribution in the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Poland, Hong Kong and Canada. Its international funds are distributed and serviced by Legg Mason's global distribution group. The company’s international funds include equity, fixed income, liquidity and balanced funds that are primarily managed or sub-advised by Batterymarch Financial Management, Brandywine Global, ClearBridge, Esemplia, Legg Mason Capital Management, Private Capital Management, Royce & Associates, Western Asset Management and its global asset allocation team. In aggregate, the company sponsors and manages approximately 230 of these international funds.
Retail Separately Managed Account Programs
The company is a provider of asset management services to retail separately managed account programs, commonly known as managed account or wrap programs. These programs allow securities brokers or other financial intermediaries to offer their clients the opportunity to choose from asset management services pursuing different investment strategies provided by one or more asset managers, and charge an all-inclusive fee that covers asset management, trade execution, asset allocation and custodial and administrative services. The company provides investment management services to retail separately managed account programs sponsored by several financial institutions.
Regulations
The company’s asset managers may be subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA), and related regulations, particularly insofar as they act as a ‘fiduciary’ under ERISA with respect to benefit plan clients. ERISA and related provisions of the Internal Revenue Code impose duties on persons who are fiduciaries under ERISA, and prohibit certain transactions involving the assets of ERISA plan clients and certain transactions by the fiduciaries (and several other related parties) to the plans. The Department of Labor, which administers ERISA, has been increasingly active in proposing and adopting regulations affecting the asset management industry. In addition, Legg Mason Investment Counsel & Trust Company is regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
History
Legg Mason, Inc. was founded in 1899.
