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Administration June 8, 2005
MetLife in State Street Research Sell Talks With BlackRock
August 18, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - MetLife Inc and
BlackRock Inc are negotiating a sell of MetLife's State
Street Research & Management Co investment
firm.
Reported by
Eric Hazard
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.