While some wonder Legg Mason is biting off more than it can chew with its acquisition of Citigroup's asset management business, Raymond "Chip" Mason remains zen-like about post-deal plans.

After all, there's no need to for the newly minted fifth largest U.S. money manager to wholly integrate the massive Citi unit, says Mason in an interview with Investors Business Daily.

"We will certainly try to integrate or reduce the number of mutual funds … because they have a lot of mutual funds. We've tended to operate with fewer funds, but more focused and hopefully with better performance," said Mason.

Although some Smith Barney funds will vanish or merge, others will stay the same, said Mason. "We're not going to merge them into anything," Mason told IBD. "The same people will sit at the same desks."

The remaining funds will likely be renamed, "to a name that is either Legg Mason or one that we create, but other than that, nothing's going to change," said Mason.

In that vein, key money managers from Citigroup have signed three-year contracts with Legg Mason, including Hersh Cohen and Richie Freeman, "who are certainly two of their stars, [and] will in essence be managing the same funds, the same amounts of money," Mason told IBD.

What may be difficult, however, is the integration of Citigroup's fixed income business into Legg Mason's Western Asset Management. "Western is going to have the greatest job in integrating a tremendously large amount of assets, some of which are individual accounts with institutions, mutual funds, liquidity assets -- whatever it is, this will ultimately be merged into Western Asset," said Mason.

Meanwhile, the 68-year old founder may not be around to see the full integration of Citigroup's asset management business and newly acquired fund-of-hedge funds Permal Asset Management. Mason has agreed to man the helm for at least another two years, but expects the board of directors to name a successor before next year. While Mason has no say in who will replace him, he hopes that the directors will name an insider.

"I would hope it was in-house," said Mason, "but that's their decision."  

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