Bank of America looks to offload BlackRock stake

The bank, which inherited the stake after acquitting troubled investment bank Merrill Lynch last year, does no longer consider the fund manager giant as a ‘core' asset, the Wall St Journal and Bloomberg report. Bank of America's 34% stake has a market value of $9.3bn, according to a 6 August regulatory filing. Merrill Lynch acquired just under 50% of BlackRock in 2006 after merging its Merrill Lynch Investment Managers arm with the group. The holding was diluted last year through a share issue. UK bank Barclays owns a 19.9% of BlackRock after offloading its ETF arm iShares. Barclay...