Good morning and welcome to the Victory Capital conference call. All callers are in listen mode only. Following the company's prepared remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Matthew Dennis, Chief of Staff and Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Dennis.
Thank you and good morning. Welcome to Victory Capital's conference call to discuss the signing of the definitive agreement between Victory Capital and Amundi. Statements made on this conference call that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements and speak only as of today's date and involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. Victory Capital assumes no duty and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Please refer to our press release that was issued early this morning, as well as our recent SEC filings, including Forms 10-K and Form 10-Q, for additional risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, all of which can be found on our website at ir.vcm.com.
Furthermore, please note that the ultimate completion of a transaction remains subject to certain closing conditions as well as regulatory approvals. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to David Brown, Chairman and CEO. David?
Thank you, Matt. Good morning and welcome to Victory Capital's conference call to announce the signing of a definitive agreement with Amundi. I'm joined today by Michael Policarpo, our President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as Matt Dennis, our Chief of Staff and Director of Investor Relations. Following our brief prepared remarks, Mike, Matt, and I will be available to take your questions. The presentation begins on slide 3. On April 16th, we disclosed our memorandum of understanding for plan to enter into a strategic and multidimensional transaction with Amundi that would positively evolve our company in a number of ways. As we mentioned in the press release that was issued earlier this morning, there are no material differences in what we envisioned and memorialized in the memorandum of understanding and what is in the definitive agreement.
Over the past few months, we have worked diligently to get to the signing of the definitive agreement. We are excited to say that we have completed this phase of the transaction on plan, and beginning today, we turn our attention to closing, which we expect will occur in either late 2024 or early 2025. As we engage with the Amundi leadership team to forge the formal agreement, we were consistently impressed by our shared values and client focus. This gives us a great deal of comfort as we move ahead with what is going to be a very long-term relationship. This transaction is anticipated to generate significant value creation and serve as a catalyst for profitable growth and higher cash flow moving forward. I believe we will look back on 2024 as an important milestone in our company's growth trajectory. Expanding our distribution reach outside of the U.S.
market through Amundi's strong distribution network and JV partners will greatly accelerate the globalization of our firm. In addition, it immediately diversifies our client base with an increased international presence, as more than a third of Amundi U.S.'s AUM is currently from non-U.S. clients. Victory Capital will become the exclusive provider of U.S.-manufactured active asset management products for Amundi's distribution outside of the U.S. This opens a large and robust international distribution channel for our products to reach clients around the world through Amundi's global distribution network, which has a local presence in 35 countries and 1,000 third-party distributors reaching more than 100 million retail clients and more than 1,500 institutional clients. Moreover, Victory Capital will be the exclusive distributor of Amundi products in the U.S., which will give us access to additional products for our current and future clients.
A second significant aspect of the transaction is the combination of Amundi's U.S. business into Victory Capital in exchange for voting rights of 4.9% and a total economic interest of 26.1% in Victory Capital. Amundi's stake in our firm closely aligns our respective economic interests and sets the foundation for success on the reciprocal distribution agreements. The addition of their U.S. business adds what will be our largest investment franchise and significantly enhances the size and scale of our overall business by adding more than $100 billion of assets under management with very competitive long-term investment performance. It will broaden our investment capabilities through the addition of complementary U.S. fixed income, equity, and multi-asset strategies. While the transaction is strategically beneficial, it is also accretive to earnings and will strengthen our balance sheet. The combination of the Amundi U.S.
Business onto our platform aligns very well with our proven M&A history and playbook. We anticipate low double-digit EPS accretion by the end of the first full year of ownership. In addition, since we are not using cash or debt as consideration, the incremental earnings will significantly reduce our leverage ratio and provide significant additional strategic and capital flexibility. This will allow us to continue reinvesting in our business to drive organic growth. It will also provide us more financial wherewithal as we pursue future acquisition prospects and increase the return of capital to shareholders. Following closing, we will have an even larger and more robust U.S. distribution capability. This, combined with our exclusive access to one of the largest and most effective international distribution networks in the industry, will position us even more attractively as the acquirer of choice for high-performing investment organizations.
We are confident in our ability to realize meaningful synergies from this transaction, and we are maintaining our prior guidance of approximately $100 million in expense synergies, with most of that being generated from vendor consolidations, improved economies of scale, and elimination of redundancies. We expect expense synergies to be fully realized within 2 years, with most achieved within the first year. We have not included any revenue synergies in our guidance at this point. On slide 4, you can see that when the transaction closes, it will meaningfully diversify our asset class mix. We will increase our proportion of fixed income, which is an asset class we are very bullish on for the long term. We will also see an immediate increase in our non-U.S. AUM, with 15% of pro forma assets projected to be from clients outside of the U.S.
Additionally, under the global distribution agreement, we would expect that proportion to grow in the future. Amundi U.S. has the infrastructure already in place to facilitate distribution throughout the Amundi global network and through their joint ventures around the world. Therefore, we will not need to start from scratch and look forward to broadening and increasing the U.S. manufactured product range being sold and serviced by this extensive distribution complex. Lastly, we have updated our deal timeline. There remain several key milestones between today and closing, including consent from the Amundi U.S. clients, regulatory approvals, and VCTR shareholder approvals for the share issuance. In parallel, we will be developing integration plans that ensure no disruptions to the investment teams and client experience. With that, we will now take your questions.
We are now opening the floor for question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. That's star, one on your telephone keypad. Our first question comes from Adam Beatty from UBS. Your line is now open.
Oh, thank you and good morning. I agree with the comments definitely around the potential for international distribution, and the numbers there are pretty hefty, pretty compelling. Just want to get some color, if I could, around the first steps toward integrating legacy Victory's products into Amundi's distribution and also maybe a bit on the nature of the distribution partnerships that Amundi has? Thank you.
Sure. Good morning. First, I think it's important to understand that today the Amundi U.S. business is distributing their own products internationally through the Amundi distribution system. So the infrastructure is set up already. Our plans are to plug into that infrastructure, to invest in that infrastructure, provide additional products into that infrastructure so it can be distributed throughout the world through Amundi's distribution system. One of the real advantages of this transaction is it brings a broader set of manufacturing out of the U.S. to the Amundi distribution system and to Amundi's clients outside of the U.S., which they desire to have a wider and deeper U.S. manufacturing capability.
So we'll fill that. That'll be the first step. During announce and close, we'll work with the Amundi U.S. team to see how we can accelerate what they're doing, enhance what they're doing, and then work with our team to see how we can plug in most efficiently. I think it's really important to note that all of the guidance we've given so far has all really been around expense synergies. We've not included in any of the guidance any revenue synergies. We'll eventually do that, and we do see that there will be a significant amount of revenue synergies for us going forward when we think about this long-term relationship.
Excellent. Appreciate that. Just a quick follow-up. You mentioned maybe doing some investment into the distribution network. I'm just wondering what kinds of investment you're contemplating. Thanks.
We'll work with the Amundi U.S. team. My hope is that we can invest in areas with people, technology, and getting more efficient and effective. All of that investment is really netted into our expense synergy. So when we talk about the guidance of $100 million, that's net of investment, so that includes the investment piece. But we'll work with the Amundi U.S. team to see where they best think that money can be invested to accelerate distribution, to make it more effective, to make it more efficient, and really set it up for the next decade or so.
Got it. Thank you. Appreciate the call and the questions. Thanks.
As of right now, we don't have any questions left in the queue. I'd like to thank everyone for attending today's call. We hope that you found it useful. Have a wonderful day and stay safe.