Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the owner of NYSE, has completed its acquisition of the index business of Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) which will become part of ICE Data Services.
The ICE BofAML Indices contains the second largest fixed income index suite by AUM globally.
BofAML’s index business encompasses more than 5,000 fixed income, currency and commodity (FICC) indices, used by thousands of investors and market participants around the world.
The acquired indices, to be renamed ICE BofAML Indices, are the second largest fixed income index suite by assets under management (AUM) globally.
With the completion of the acquisition, ICE estimates AUM benchmarked against its combined fixed income index business will be nearly $1 trillion.
The fixed income space is one of the fastest-growing areas of the ETF universe, and this acquisition pits ICE squarely against rivals such as Bloomberg Barclays, IHS Markit and FTSE Russell, currently the market leaders in fixed income indexing and benchmarking.
“We’re excited to expand the breadth and scale of our index offering to give customers increased choice of third party benchmark solutions,” said Lynn Martin, president and COO of ICE Data Services.
“With the addition of these indices, we are able to offer a comprehensive portfolio that includes the addition of more than 5,000 global fixed income, currency and commodity indices and leverages our trusted pricing and reference data solutions to meet the needs of our customers.”
ICE had previously sought to build out its own index suite, introducing a family US Treasury indices in January 2016. iShares, the ETF platform of investment giant BlackRock, was an early licensee of these indices, ditching underlyings from Barclays in favour of ICE indices on four ETFs (see: “iShares to switch four Treasury bond ETFs to ICE indices”).
The full suite of ICE BofAML Indices are available on ICE’s Global Index System, as well as a broad range of third-party research platforms and execution venues.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.