* Mary Anne Wiley named head of Canada iShares
* Som Seif leaves 3 months after Claymore acquired
* Seif to stay through mid-April to ease transition
By Andrea Hopkins
April 2 (Reuters) – April 2 (Reuters) – BlackRock
Investments Canada Inc, a unit of New-York based BlackRock Inc
, named Mary Anne Wiley head of its iShares unit on
Monday following the completion of BlackRock’s purchase of
Claymore Investments Inc.
BlackRock said Som Seif, the former president and chief
executive of Claymore, was leaving the company less than three
months after it acquired Claymore from Seif, but that he would
stay at BlackRock until mid April to help with the transition.
“We’d like to thank Som for his innovation and contribution
to the Canadian ETF (exchange-traded fund) marketplace and for
his guidance through the transition,” Wiley said in a statement.
Seif founded Claymore in Canada in 2005 and helped it expand
to nearly $8 billion in assets, making it one of the
fastest-growing investment firms in Canadian history.
BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, acquired
Claymore when it bought all of Guggenheim Partners’ interest in
Claymore in January. The deal closed on March 7.
The acquisition of Canada’s No. 2 ETF provider by the No. 1
player gave Blackrock’s iShares about a 82 percent market share,
with 80 ETFs and C$38.7 billion ($38.7 billion) in assets under
management.
Wiley, formerly head of distribution at iShares, said her
strategy in amalgamating the combined product platform of
iShares and Claymore would focus on transparency as it expands
its product line to compete against both mutual funds and ETFs.
“This expansion is an important milestone in the evolution
of ETF investing in Canada, and enables us as a market leader to
broaden our product offering and provide our clients and
investors even more choice,” Wiley said.
iShares said it will terminate the Claymore Inverse 10-Year
Government Bond ETF and distribute proceeds to
unitholders. Wiley said the fund was speculative in nature and
designed for short-term use, and did not fit well with iShares
brand and focus on transparency and disclosure.
The other newly acquired Claymore funds have been rebranded
as iShares funds but their ticker symbols are unchanged, iShares
said.
