MetLife in State Street Research Sell Talks With BlackRock

The Boston Globe, citing unnamed executives, said BlackRock , a publicly traded investment firm, has been negotiating to acquire the firm for several weeks and is close to sealing a deal.   Reports of a possible sell-off of the State Street Research unit have been swirling around since June.  

A BlackRock deal would make sense given State Street Research’s “equity bent, and greater retail aspirations at BlackRock ,” Neil Bathon , president of Financial Research Corp., a Boston fund research firm, told the Globe.  Bathon estimated that MetLife could fetch $650 million to $950 million for State Street Research.

State Street Research has $52 billion in assets under management.   Of that amount, $11 billion of the assets are in mutual funds; the rest of the money is managed for pensions, endowments, and other large clients.

State Street Research is unrelated to State Street Corp.