Barclays, the British bank off-loading much of its investment banking units, is in talks with four bidders to sell off its indexing unit for around $1 billion, The Post has learned.
Bloomberg, Standard & Poor’s, MSCI and financial data firm Markit are each in talks to buy the index group, sources said.
The discussions are early, one source added — saying they were in the first of two expected rounds of talks.
The indexing unit makes money by licensing its formula to companies looking to mimic its returns.
The indexes, largely made up of bonds and currencies — collectively known as fixed income — attract billions in assets.
The two largest bond exchange-traded funds, run by Vanguard and iShares, both use Barclays’ bond benchmarks as their gauges, and collectively have more than $30 billion in assets, according to data from Bloomberg News.
PIMCO, the largest bond fund in the world, also uses Barclays indexes for investing.
Barclays inherited the indexing group after the bank bought the crashed Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Bidders are also looking to buy an asset-allocation software program, called Point, that’s popular with money managers and hedge funds, according to one source.
Barclays Chief Executive Officer Antony Jenkins said in a statement in May that he was selling off the riskier parts of the bank after currency and interest-rate rigging scandals sullied its reputation.
Representatives for Bloomberg, S&P and MSCI didn’t return calls seeking comment. Markit declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Bloomberg and Markit were in talks to buy the Barclays group.