Max Skjönsberg
Reporter
23 May 2012
Daily News Analysis
Barclays, the UK-listed bank, has said that funds from the future sale of its financial interest in BlackRock, the asset management giant, will be retained in the business.
"After careful consideration, we have decided that now is an appropriate time to release capital from this investment and reinvest it in our core businesses,” Chris Lucas, group finance director at the bank, said in a statement.
The sale of the bank’s 19.6 per cent stake in BlackRock was announced at the start of the week and is expected to increase Barclays’ core tier 1 ratio by 0.05 per cent.
Barclays has agreed to sell 26,211,335 shares of common stock of BlackRock at a price of $160 per share. As previously announced, BlackRock will also repurchase 6,377,552 shares at $156.80 per share, for a total price of $1 billion.
The UK bank expects to receive net proceeds of $5.5 billion and a gain of £200 million ($314.5 million).
The $15.2 billion sale of Barclays Global Investors to BlackRock was completed in March 2009, and made BlackRock the world’s largest asset manager. Today, the investment titan has $3.7 trillion in assets under management.
In September last year, Barclays’ investment in the asset manager was written down to a fair value of £3.4 billion ($5.4 billion).
