BlackRock has completed the acquisition of Credit Suisse’s exchange traded funds (ETF) business.
The move expands BlackRock’s ETF presence primarily in Switzerland but also in Ireland and Luxembourg and reinforces its position as the dominant ETF provider in Europe.
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The Credit Suisse ETF business, which comprises 58 ETFs, will be re-branded and re-named and begin trading as iShares ETFs on the exchanges where such funds are listed. The combined firm will operate under the iShares name.
With the acquisition, iShares now provides the broadest range of ETF exposures based in Switzerland. As at the end of May 2013, this range had Swiss assets of CHF7.7 billion (US$8.1 billion) across equities, fixed income and gold funds.
BlackRock stated that the combined business manages a highly liquid suite of physically replicating funds that invest in leading Swiss indexes, such as the Swiss benchmark index SMI, Swiss Domestic Government Bonds Indices (SBI) as well as ETFs on physical gold.
David Blumer, head of EMEA for BlackRock, said: "BlackRock has been helping Swiss clients meet their financial objectives for 10 years. We believe that more investors will have an interest in owning financial products denominated in Swiss francs and we want to serve them. This acquisition is just one sign of BlackRock’s commitment to Switzerland and it deepens and expands our presence in this market."
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By GlobalDataThe completion comes just days after the UK’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) revealed that it would not be referring the acquisition to the Competition Commission.
BlackRock reached an agreement to buy Credit Suisse’s US$17.6 billion range of exchange traded funds in January this year. The deal was in line with the Swiss bank’s divestment strategy.
