BlackRock to Buy Barclays Unit for $13.5B

Updated from 12:28 a.m. EDT

BlackRock(BLK Quote) is now the world's biggest asset manager.

The New York-based company late Thursday said it reached a deal to acquire the asset management arm of Barclays(BCS Quote) for $13.5 billion in cash and stock.

Under the terms of the deal, BlackRock will acquire Barclays Global Investors, which is active in both index funds and exchange-traded funds, for $6.6 billion in cash and 37.8 million shares, currently worth about $6.9 billion. The Barclays unit had about $1.5 trillion of assets under management as of Dec. 31 and 3,000 institutional clients. ...