Barclays PLC shareholders today almost unanimously approved the sale of BGI to BlackRock, creating the world’s largest money manager with about $2.7 trillion in assets under management, according to a company statement from Barclays.
About 99.9% of Barclays shareholders voted to approve the deal, under which the bank will retain a 20% stake in the combined business. The entity will be renamed BlackRock Global Investors when the deal closes, which is expected in the fourth quarter.
On June 16, Barclays had agreed to sell its money management operations for $14 billion in cash and BlackRock shares.
The move followed a separate but unsuccessful bid by private equity firm CVC Partners to acquire Barclays’ prized iShares ETF business, which has about $375 billion in assets under management. iShares is included in BlackRock’s acquisition of BGI.
The transaction was done partly to boost Barclays’ Tier 1 capital ratio, a measure of the bank’s financial health, by about 1.5 percentage points to 8.8%.
For BlackRock, the deal positions the combined firm to meet growing demand from institutional investors for strategic partners with multiasset investment and risk-management capabilities to oversee their portfolios, Chairman and CEO Laurence D. Fink said during a July 21 second-quarter earnings conference call.
Barclays shares rose 5.2% today to close at 354 pence per share.
