Roughly one in eight bondholders took Stilwell Financial up on its offer to pay extra interest in exchange for not putting the paper back to Stilwell. The parent of Janus and Berger Funds said that on $82.5 million of the nearly $700 million issue were not tendered this week.

The fund holding company originally issued the five-year bonds to finance the purchase of Janus shares as a part of executive compensation agreements. The financing was driven in part by the need to purchase Janus shares from founder Thomas Bailey.

All told Stilwell was forced to pay $614.5 million worth of bonds that were put back to the firm. It said that it used existing cash and credit facilities to make the payments. The firm filed a shelf registration two weeks ago to raise an additional $142.7 million.

"We are pleased with this outcome," said Landon H. Rowland, Stilwell's chairman, president and chief executive officer. "We were able to achieve a very low cost of financing for one year, and we now are able to use our cash to reduce our total debt." 

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