Intercontinental Exchange, a leading operator of global exchanges, will acquire Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Global Research Division Indexes Platform.
Encompassing more than 5,000 fixed income, currency and commodity indices, the BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research index platform is crucial to thousands of investors and market participants in the world, according to a press release. ICE Data Services, whom the BofAML indices will become a part of, intends to enhance and grow the platform in order to meet the index management, analytics and valuations needs of the customers.
The BoAML indices, which are the second most used fixed income indices by assets under management (AUM) globally, have resulted in nearly $1 trillion when benchmarked against the combined fixed income index business of ICE.
“We are excited to build on ICE’s index services, which complement our leading fixed income pricing solutions in serving the demand for indexation as passive investing grows,” said Lynn Martin, President & COO of ICE Data Services. “We believe the BofAML Global Research FICC indices will offer customers more choice alongside the ICE U.S. Treasury indices and NYSE equity indices as comprehensive, trusted benchmarks. We look forward to working with our investment management customers to address their requirements for new tools to grow their AUM efficiently.”
While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, the transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2017, while the financial impact of the transaction is expected to be immaterial in 2017.