New York-listed fund house BlackRock has offered to buy Barclays Global Investors BGI from British bank Barclays PLC for $13.5 billion in a deal that is expected to create the world's largest asset management company.
The resulting company -- BlackRock Global Investors -- will merge market leaders in active and index strategies and bring their combined assets under management to more than $2.7 trillion. While this figure represents only about 3% to 5% of the total assets under management of fund houses worldwide, it is significant in the sense that it's nearly double the size of its next strongest competitors.
BlackRock's offer includes the purchase of BGI's...