Blackrock and Merrill to merge - papers 16th Feb

According to The Scotsman, Merrill Lynch is to merge its asset management unit with money manager BlackRock, creating one of the world's largest asset management firms. The new company will have about $1 trillion in assets under management, wedding Merrill's equity-heavy business with the mostly fixed-income assets of BlackRock. Merrill will take a 49.8% per cent stake in BlackRock, and merge its Merrill Lynch Investment Managers' unit into BlackRock. MLIM has $539bn in assets, while BlackRock has about £453bn under management. BlackRock founder and chief executive, Laurence Fink, ...