The sale is part of Credit Suisse’s divestment strategy revealed in July last year and follows an announcement in October that the firm had decided to pursue the sale of its ETF business.
The range comprises 58 funds, all of which will transfer to BlackRock with unchanged names, mandates and indices under the agreement.
Credit Suisse said there could be further announcements made in due course but there was no need for clients to take immediate action as the fund management and reporting processes would remain the same during the transaction.
The Credit Suisse ETF business had assets under management of CHF 16bn ($17.6bn) at of the end of November 2012.
Meanwhile, BlackRock’s ETF business, iShares had a global AUM of $758bn at the end of December 2012.
Combined, iShares EMEA ETF range and the acquired Credit Suisse offering will comprise 264ETFs and total $157.6bn in AUM.
Joe Linhares, head of iShares EMEA, said: “The transaction will significantly extend BlackRock’s footprint in Switzerland, which is home to one of the deepest investor bases in Europe. Our long-term strategy is based on tapping growth markets in a disciplined way and deepening our presence with investors.”
As well as nine funds domiciled in Switzerland, the Credit Suisse range has ETFs domiciled in Ireland and Luxembourg.
Peter Sleep, senior portfolio manager at 7iM, said: “Consolidation is not good for the consumer but is good for the consolidator’s profits. I am not sure this is a welcome development as it concentrates the physical ETF space in one very dominant European issuer.
“I cannot see any other strategic rationale for this deal as CS and iShares products largely duplicate each other. This concentration is a way for iShares to preserve its prices, which are the highest in Europe and keeps the CS business out of a competitor such as State Street or Vanguard.
“If one of these had bought CS they might have been in a better position to challenge iShares more effectively and put some pricing pressure on them,” he concluded.
