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Friday January 12 2:05 PM ET
Janus Ties Fund Fortunes to AOL-TW
By Patricia Vowinkel
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Steve Case may have the top job at AOL TimeWarner, but it is the big mutual fund company Janus Capital that may have the most riding on the success of the newly merged media giant.
Janus has not only put a big bet on AOL TimeWarner, making AOL TimeWarner the top holding in its $40 billion flagship Janus Fund, but it is also the combined company's biggest shareholder.
Janus held about 197.8 million shares of AOL TimeWarner based on the fund's regulatory filings as of September 2000, according to AOL Time Warner's Web site.
That would give Janus about a 4.6 percent stake in the new company, which would be valued at about $9 billion.
Internet giant America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) on Thursday acquired cable and media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX - news) in a $106.2 billion deal after winning conditional approval from the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites).
The deal was completed a year and a day after the companies announced their merger plans and creates the world's largest media company.
Janus has been one of the hottest mutual funds of the 1990s, known for making technology investment accessible to a broad audience with its popular Janus Fund.
Case, the chairman of the new AOL TimeWarner, did the same for the Internet itself with his popular Web portal.
After Janus, which is 82.5 percent owned by Stilwell Financial Inc. (NYSE:SV - news), AOL Time Warner's top shareholders include Barclays Global Investors, Fidelity Management, American Century Investment Management and Alliance Capital.
For its part, Janus stuffed most of its AOL TimeWarner stake in its Janus Fund, where it had about 48.3 million shares of Time Warner on Oct. 31, according to Janus's Winter 2000 report. That represents about 7.9 percent of the portfolio, up from 5.8 percent a year ago.
The Janus Fund also had about 8 million shares of America Online as of Oct. 31, the report showed.
Other top holdings in the Janus Fund included Comcast Corp. (NasdaqNM:CMCSA - news), which ranked second, making up about 4.4 percent of the fund; followed by Linear Technology Corp (NasdaqNM:LLTC - news), Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA - news), Nokia (NOK1V.HE), Cisco Systems Inc (NasdaqNM:CSCO - news), Enron Corp. (NYSE:ENE - news), Maxim Integrated Products Inc. (NasdaqNM:MXIM - news), EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC - news) and Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE:SCH - news).
AOL TimeWarner shares also showed up in a number of other Janus mutual funds.
In addition to the Janus Fund, AOL TimeWarner also makes up a large part of the Janus Twenty Fund, the Janus Worldwide Fund, the Janus Mercury Fund, the Janus Growth and Income Fund, and the Janus Special Situations Fund.
The Janus Twenty Fund held about 21.4 million Time Warner shares, representing about 5.2 percent of the portfolio as of Oct. 31, 2000. It also held about 36.7 million shares of America Online, representing about 6 percent of the portfolio.
The Janus Worldwide Fund held about 12.4 million shares, for about 2.5 percent of that portfolio and about 3.5 million shares of America Online. And the Janus Mercury Fund held 8.9 million shares of Time Warner, making up about 4.1 percent of the fund.
The Janus Growth and Income Fund owned about 3.2 million Time Warner shares, representing about 2.6 percent of the portfolio and the Janus Special Situations Fund had about 1.2 million shares, for about 5.3 percent of the fund.
The holdings in those funds have stayed fairly steady compared with a year ago, the Janus report showed.
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