The Wall Street Journal's Fund Track column offers another up on the continuing negotiations between BlackRock and Barclays Global Investors. Eleanor Laise reports that, if the deal is completed, BlackRock will become one of the largest money management firms, with about $2.8 trillion in assets, and help shape the future of the ETF industry. At the end of May, six of the ten biggest U.S. ETFs belonged to iShares.

Bank of New York Mellon is mentioned as one potential competing bidder. And while Barclays has a tentative agreement to sell just iShares to CVC, there is a clause in the deal which allows Barclays to consider other offers. CVC has declined to comment on whether or not they will counter with a bid for all of BGI if BlackRock does make Barclays an offer.

Laise writes that this looming deal could herald continued consolidation in the money management industry. Greggory Warren, an analyst at Morningstar comments, "the big will get bigger and a lot of the smaller asset managers will either be swallowed up or fall off to the wayside". Speculation about BlackRock's interest in BGI came to light last month, and on Friday the Financial Times reported that a deal was near (see , 6/5/2009.) And on Monday BlackRock confirmed that "negotiations are ongoing" between the two firms (see MFWire, 6/8/2009). 

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