BlackRock interested in Barclays unit BGI

Bloomberg

A sale of Barclays Global Investors, with 1.04 trillion pounds ($1.6 trillion) of funds under management, would derail an agreement announced last month to sell BGI’s iShares unit to CVC Capital Partners Ltd. for $4.4 billion, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. Barclays has until June 18 to look for better offers for the iShares exchange-traded fund business and related units under the terms of the agreement with CVC, a London-based buyout firm. BlackRock Chief Executive Officer Laurence Fink said on an April 21 conference call that he’d be interested in expanding the firm’s position in retail mutual funds through acquisitions.

"Barclays deliberately structured the deal with a go-shop clause" to attract additional bidders, Simon Maughan, an analyst at MF Global Securities Ltd. in London, who has a "neutral" rating on Barclays stock, said on May 11.

Officials at San Francisco-based BGI, New York-based BlackRock and BNY Mellon declined to comment. The Financial Times, which reported the talks earlier, said BGI may sell for about $10 billion.

BlackRock is the biggest publicly traded U.S. asset manager and oversees $1.3 trillion, mostly for institutions.