BlackRock Inc., New York, is looking to finalize its marriage with Boston's State Street Research & Management Co. by month's end, but roughly one-fifth of the bride's institutional guests are looking like no-shows for the festivities.
Among the bigger clients either terminating the firm or transferring only a portion of their SSRM portfolios to BlackRock are the $24.5 billion pension fund of DaimlerChrysler Corp., Auburn Hills, Mich.; $21.5 billion pension fund of BellSouth Corp., Atlanta; and the $5.5 billion William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, Calif., according to a source at SSRM who declined to be identified.
Doug Brown, director-asset management group at DaimlerChrysler; Thomas L. Harvey, director-public market investments with BellSouth; and Laurance Hoagland Jr., chief investment officer for the Hewlett Foundation, all declined to comment.
As many as 24 of the 109 institutional clients SSRM had in August — when BlackRock announced it would acquire the company — are not staying, according to the SSRM source. Those departures could trim the firm's $27 billion in institutional mandates by between $2 billion and $3 billion, the source said.